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The song Vande Mataram composed by Bankimchandra Chatterji has an equal status with jana-gana-mana. The first political occasion when it was sung was the 1896 session of the Indian National Congress. This song has been a source of inspiration to the people in their struggle for freedom.

It reads as:

Translation

Mother, I salute thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Green fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.
Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When swords flash out in seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Thou who saves, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foe drove
Back from plain and sea
And shook herself free.
Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nerves the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.
Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,

In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Loveliest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!
translated by Sri Aurobindo

Vande Mataram, Sujalam, suphalam, malayaja shitalam, Shasyashyamalam, Mataram!
Shubhrajyothsna pulakitayamini, Phullakusumita drumadala shobhinim, Suhasini sumadhura bhashini, Sukadam varadam, Mataram!

English translation of the stanza rendered by Sri Aurobindo (in Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library Popular Edition 1972, vol.

A mix of Bengali and Sanskrit, the song appears in Bankimchandra Chattopadyay’s book Anandmath published in 1882. Initially it was criticized on the grounds of difficulty in pronunciation of some words included in it, however, when Jadunath Bhattacharya set the tune for it, soon it became shouting slogan of every Indian striving for the freedom of the country.

Bankimchandra wrote Vande Mataram while he was an official of the then British government. During 1870s when the British declared the singing of God Save the Queen a mandate, Vande Mataram came as a national cry for freedom from British oppression. Many freedom fighters were imprisoned for utterance of the Vande Mataram in public forums as it was banned by the British fearing a potential danger of an incited Indian populace.

A number of lyrical and musical experiments have been done and many versions of the song have been created and released throughout the 20th century. Many of these versions have employed traditional South Asian classical ragas. Versions of the song have been visualized on celluloid in a number of films including Leader (film), Amar asha and Anandamath. It is widely believed that the tune set for All India Radio station version was composed by Ravi Shankar.

Vande Mataram was rejected to the national anthem of the nation on the grounds that Muslims felt offended by its depiction of the nation as “Mother Durga”—a Hindu goddess— thus equating the nation with the Hindu conception of shakti, divine feminine dynamic force; and by its origin as part of Anandamath, a novel they felt had an anti-Muslim message.

In 1937 the Indian National Congress discussed at length the status of the song. It was pointed out then that though the first two stanzas began with an unexceptionable evocation of the beauty of the motherland, in later stanzas there are references where the motherland is likened to the Hindu goddess Durga. Therefore, the Congress decided to adopt only the first two stanzas as the national song.