Hi folks,
Is it true ?..
Facts about "Jana Gana Mana" - How well do you know about it?
Have always wondered who is the "adhinayak" and "bharat bhagya vidhata", whose praise we are singing. I thought might be Motherland India! Our current National Anthem "Jana Gana Mana" is sung throughout the country.
Did you know the following about our national anthem, I didn't.
To begin with, India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honour of King George V and the Queen of England when they visited India in 1919.
To honour their visit Pandit Motilal Nehru had the five stanzas included, which are in praise of the King and Queen. (And most of us think it is in the praise of our great motherland!!!)
In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha etc. were mentioned. None of the princely states were recognised which are integral parts of India now Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala. Neither the Indian Ocean nor the Arabian Sea was included, since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time.
The Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka implies that King George V is the lord of the masses and Bharata Bhagya Vidhata is "the bestower of good fortune".
Following is a translation of the five stanzas that glorify the King:
First stanza: (Indian) People wake up remembering your good name and ask
for your blessings and they sing your glories. (Tava shubha naame jaage; tava shubha aashish maage, gaaye tava jaya gaatha)
Second stanza: Around your throne people of all religions come and give their love and anxiously wait to hear your kind words.
Third stanza: Praise to the King for being the charioteer, for leading the ancient travellers beyond misery.
Fourth stanza: Drowned in the deep ignorance and suffering, poverty-stricken, unconscious country? Waiting for the wink of your eye and your mother's (the Queen's) true protection.
Fifth stanza: In your compassionate plans, the sleeping Bharat (India) will wake up. We bow down to your feet O' Queen, and glory to Rajeshwara (the King).
This whole poem does not indicate any love for the Motherland but depicts a bleak picture. When you sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, whom are you glorifying? Certainly not the Motherland. Is it God? The poem does not indicate that.
It is time now to understand the original purpose and the implication of this, rather than blindly sing as has been done the past fifty years.
Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!! It was an absurd reason but Today for that matter bands have advanced and they can very well play any music. So they can as well play Vande Mataram, which is a far better composition in praise of our dear Motherland India.
Amazing, aint it?
From India, Pune
100Is it true ?..
Facts about "Jana Gana Mana" - How well do you know about it?
Have always wondered who is the "adhinayak" and "bharat bhagya vidhata", whose praise we are singing. I thought might be Motherland India! Our current National Anthem "Jana Gana Mana" is sung throughout the country.
Did you know the following about our national anthem, I didn't.
To begin with, India's national anthem, Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honour of King George V and the Queen of England when they visited India in 1919.
To honour their visit Pandit Motilal Nehru had the five stanzas included, which are in praise of the King and Queen. (And most of us think it is in the praise of our great motherland!!!)
In the original Bengali verses only those provinces that were under British rule, i.e. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha etc. were mentioned. None of the princely states were recognised which are integral parts of India now Kashmir, Rajasthan, Andhra, Mysore or Kerala. Neither the Indian Ocean nor the Arabian Sea was included, since they were directly under Portuguese rule at that time.
The Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka implies that King George V is the lord of the masses and Bharata Bhagya Vidhata is "the bestower of good fortune".
Following is a translation of the five stanzas that glorify the King:
First stanza: (Indian) People wake up remembering your good name and ask
for your blessings and they sing your glories. (Tava shubha naame jaage; tava shubha aashish maage, gaaye tava jaya gaatha)
Second stanza: Around your throne people of all religions come and give their love and anxiously wait to hear your kind words.
Third stanza: Praise to the King for being the charioteer, for leading the ancient travellers beyond misery.
Fourth stanza: Drowned in the deep ignorance and suffering, poverty-stricken, unconscious country? Waiting for the wink of your eye and your mother's (the Queen's) true protection.
Fifth stanza: In your compassionate plans, the sleeping Bharat (India) will wake up. We bow down to your feet O' Queen, and glory to Rajeshwara (the King).
This whole poem does not indicate any love for the Motherland but depicts a bleak picture. When you sing Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka, whom are you glorifying? Certainly not the Motherland. Is it God? The poem does not indicate that.
It is time now to understand the original purpose and the implication of this, rather than blindly sing as has been done the past fifty years.
Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!! It was an absurd reason but Today for that matter bands have advanced and they can very well play any music. So they can as well play Vande Mataram, which is a far better composition in praise of our dear Motherland India.
Amazing, aint it?
From India, Pune
Hey Rajat
This is Exceptionally beautiful article ..
We went to annual functions ,movie theatres etc .. and sung this athem of ours blind ly ..in love of our motherland ..and i am sure 99.9% people living in this country India would be thinking and singing the same way ..
I reallynever gave thought to this and probably this is never ever explained in our schools also ...
i am really grateful to u probably because u have cleared the air in minds of people .. and i truly agree vande mataram is better option .. although i like national anthem much more than that ...
Keep posting other things similar to this won..
Thanks
Rupa
From India, Mumbai
This is Exceptionally beautiful article ..
We went to annual functions ,movie theatres etc .. and sung this athem of ours blind ly ..in love of our motherland ..and i am sure 99.9% people living in this country India would be thinking and singing the same way ..
I reallynever gave thought to this and probably this is never ever explained in our schools also ...
i am really grateful to u probably because u have cleared the air in minds of people .. and i truly agree vande mataram is better option .. although i like national anthem much more than that ...
Keep posting other things similar to this won..
Thanks
Rupa
From India, Mumbai
Hi Rajat,
I have read this fact time and again and never really decided to probe further onto it. When I read this post, I remembered that a court case had been issued to replace "Jana Gana Mana" with "Bande Mataram" as the national anthem and newspapers were spilled with this news. I managed to read just the headlines one fine day which said the court had ordered to continue with Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem while bande Mataram would continue to enjoy "equal status".
So I finally decided to read a bit more and came across this fantastic article written by Pradip Kumar Datta, a professor at the Delhi University. Another article talks about the credibility of Mr. Datta's article as :
"the virtue of Datta's article is that he has access to the original coverage of the event in the English-language press of the day"
Here's the link that actually reveals the truth:
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCo...tta092004.html
Also, quoting a part of the article:
"Initially the controversy seemed a non-starter. Contemporaries obviously found it hard to associate Tagore with servility. Tagore was known for this opposition to the government. Indeed, shortly after the Congress session the government passed a circular that declared Shantiniketan to be a "place altogether unsuitable for the education of Government officers" and threatened punitive measures against officers who sent their children there to study. Undoubtedly helped by these measures which shored up Tagore's nationalist reputation, the song steadily acquired wide acceptability among nationalists in all parts of the country - especially after its translation into English as "The morning song of India" by the poet in Madras. In a survey made just before the poetís death in 1941 at Mumbai, respondents felt Jana Gana Mana to have the strongest "national characteristics" although Bande Mataram was found superior on some other criteria. The dirt thrown by the pro-British press seemed to have been completely wrung out when Netaji Bose's Indian National Army adopted it as the National Anthem; this was followed by Gandhiís declaration in 1946 that "the song has found a place in our national life": that it was "also like a devotional hymn".
Bande Mataram, a strong contender to be the National Anthem, was given thought initially. But,
"Bande Mataram was controversial since its invocation of the nation as a Goddess went against Islamic theology which forbade the worship of any God other than Allah. Also the Bande Mataram had been successfully converted into a sign of communal antagonism by Hindu communalists (with the enthusiastic participation of their Muslim counterparts who regarded the song as a horrible provocation) and even chanted it as a slogan in riots." (quoted from the article itself)
One must read this article to uncover the full truth.
You know what's amazing. When I read this:
Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!!
my mind raced with thoughts of how most of never question the rules that have been laid down... not formal law rules.. even the simple day to day life rules. And then I remembered this paragraph I read in Paul Coelho's book, "The Zahir", which talked about Railway Tracks (in Europe) being or 4 feet 8 and a half iinches apart.. always. No one really knows why, so the main character decided to probe further and found:
"When they built the first train carriages, they used the same tools as they had for building horse drawn carriages. And the distance between the wheels on the carriages continued on to the distance between the wheels on the trains, which is why the railway tracks are apart. But why was the distance between wheels carriages ? Because that was the width of the old roads along which the carriages had to travel. And this width of the old roads was decided by the Romans, the first great road builders, because their war chariots were pulled by 2 horses and when placed side by side, the horses they used at that time took 143.5 cms! So ultimately, the state of the art high speed trains was determined by the Romans. When people went to the US and started building railways there, it didnt occur to them to change the width so it stayed as it was. This even affected the building of space shuttles. American engineers thought that the fuel tanks should be wider, but the tanks were built in Utah and had to be transported by train to the Space Centre in Florida and the tunnels couldn't take anything wider. And so they had to accept the measurement that the Romans had decided was ideal!"
Interesting, the consequences of not giving ordinary things a thought! I wonder whether Indian Railway Tracks also measure the same.
Regards,
Vinisha.
From India,
I have read this fact time and again and never really decided to probe further onto it. When I read this post, I remembered that a court case had been issued to replace "Jana Gana Mana" with "Bande Mataram" as the national anthem and newspapers were spilled with this news. I managed to read just the headlines one fine day which said the court had ordered to continue with Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem while bande Mataram would continue to enjoy "equal status".
So I finally decided to read a bit more and came across this fantastic article written by Pradip Kumar Datta, a professor at the Delhi University. Another article talks about the credibility of Mr. Datta's article as :
"the virtue of Datta's article is that he has access to the original coverage of the event in the English-language press of the day"
Here's the link that actually reveals the truth:
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCo...tta092004.html
Also, quoting a part of the article:
"Initially the controversy seemed a non-starter. Contemporaries obviously found it hard to associate Tagore with servility. Tagore was known for this opposition to the government. Indeed, shortly after the Congress session the government passed a circular that declared Shantiniketan to be a "place altogether unsuitable for the education of Government officers" and threatened punitive measures against officers who sent their children there to study. Undoubtedly helped by these measures which shored up Tagore's nationalist reputation, the song steadily acquired wide acceptability among nationalists in all parts of the country - especially after its translation into English as "The morning song of India" by the poet in Madras. In a survey made just before the poetís death in 1941 at Mumbai, respondents felt Jana Gana Mana to have the strongest "national characteristics" although Bande Mataram was found superior on some other criteria. The dirt thrown by the pro-British press seemed to have been completely wrung out when Netaji Bose's Indian National Army adopted it as the National Anthem; this was followed by Gandhiís declaration in 1946 that "the song has found a place in our national life": that it was "also like a devotional hymn".
Bande Mataram, a strong contender to be the National Anthem, was given thought initially. But,
"Bande Mataram was controversial since its invocation of the nation as a Goddess went against Islamic theology which forbade the worship of any God other than Allah. Also the Bande Mataram had been successfully converted into a sign of communal antagonism by Hindu communalists (with the enthusiastic participation of their Muslim counterparts who regarded the song as a horrible provocation) and even chanted it as a slogan in riots." (quoted from the article itself)
One must read this article to uncover the full truth.
You know what's amazing. When I read this:
Nehru chose the present national anthem as opposed to Vande Mataram because he thought that it would be easier for the band to play!!!
my mind raced with thoughts of how most of never question the rules that have been laid down... not formal law rules.. even the simple day to day life rules. And then I remembered this paragraph I read in Paul Coelho's book, "The Zahir", which talked about Railway Tracks (in Europe) being or 4 feet 8 and a half iinches apart.. always. No one really knows why, so the main character decided to probe further and found:
"When they built the first train carriages, they used the same tools as they had for building horse drawn carriages. And the distance between the wheels on the carriages continued on to the distance between the wheels on the trains, which is why the railway tracks are apart. But why was the distance between wheels carriages ? Because that was the width of the old roads along which the carriages had to travel. And this width of the old roads was decided by the Romans, the first great road builders, because their war chariots were pulled by 2 horses and when placed side by side, the horses they used at that time took 143.5 cms! So ultimately, the state of the art high speed trains was determined by the Romans. When people went to the US and started building railways there, it didnt occur to them to change the width so it stayed as it was. This even affected the building of space shuttles. American engineers thought that the fuel tanks should be wider, but the tanks were built in Utah and had to be transported by train to the Space Centre in Florida and the tunnels couldn't take anything wider. And so they had to accept the measurement that the Romans had decided was ideal!"
Interesting, the consequences of not giving ordinary things a thought! I wonder whether Indian Railway Tracks also measure the same.
Regards,
Vinisha.
From India,
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