The Birth of an Anthem

From right-wing slogan to moving patriotic song and now back to Hindu nationalistic war cry. Rimli Sengupta on the evolution of Vande Mataram

- Rimli Sengupta

Bharat Mata 1905 Abanindranath Tagore

I’VE BEEN SNIFFING GLUE. THE ONE ema-nating from India’s streets, asserted by a people in spate. Horror is rife and hope has been unleashed. In a rising of unprecedented coalition and scale. Women in the lead. The youth finding voice. Taking risks for the other. A surge of heart and wit in songs, placards, graffiti. The word ‘republic’ animated, its last six letters in neon. I am a grateful witness to what feels like an incandescent beginning.

I watched agog as Shaheen Bagh rang in 2020. Singing the national anthem at midnight, a sea of faces upturned at a towering tricolour rippling in the frigid air. It could’ve been a painting. The morning paper had more. There sat Rehana Khatun, under a thin tarp, swaddled against the coldest Delhi winter in a hundred years, gazing at her 20-day-old baby asleep on her lap. The baby only days older than the atrocities at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University. The caption read:

Through the darkest night

In a land ill and faint

You stayed awake

Resolute and good

Guarding me on your lap

From nightmares.