India’s national anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ completes 100 years

New Delhi, Dec 27 (Calcutta Tube / IBNS): Amidst a predicament when the country heads towards a new rebellion demanding a corruption free India, the national anthem of this ‘great’ land completes a millennium.

National anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’, composed by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in highly Sanskritized Bengali, was first sung at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress on 27 December 1911 and years later on January 24, 1950, it was officially adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the Indian national anthem.

Tagore translated the song in English along with Margaret Cousins, a fine European musician, and it is titled ‘The Morning Song of India’.

Interestingly, the entire song is of five stanzas, however, the formal rendition of the anthem which we sing and ideally takes 52 seconds, is only the first paragraph of it.

The anthem, very beautifully, praises God Almighty and at the same time conveys the message of India being a land of ‘unity in diversity’.

However, since the poem was composed at the time of the Coronation Durbar of George V, some people mistake it to be in praise of King George V and not God.

Apparently, another poem by Tagore ‘Amar Shonar Bangla’ is the national anthem of Bangladesh, making him the only person to have composed national anthems for two nations.

To this day, the library of Besant Theosophical College in Madanapalle preserves the framed original English translation of the national anthem in Gurudev’s handwriting.

(Reporting by Vatsal Verma)