From its inception during the Independence Movement, Bande Mataram controversy was artificially canned by shrewd manipulators of communal politics posing as village idiots pitifully needing protection of their "religious sentiments." The recent re-visiting of the controversy was unnecessary and a publicity stunt by the Deoband Maulanas.
Some quick facts:
The text is completely secular
It was composed before the writing of the novel, Anandamath
The novel is mis-characterized as anti-Muslim, and a recent English translation confirms that there is no full-blown communal intent in the text
The song was written for Mother Bengal and adressed to her 'saat koti' children, half of whom were Muslims. In a sly bit of editing, 'saat koti' was changed to 'koti koti' thereby not only de-coupling it from Bengal, but also distorting the song's homage to Mother Bengal to a divine Durga. Bankim was long dead, and had little to do with this doctoring of his song's text.
Like the popular American sports news-broadcaster bellows on camera: "Let's go to the videotape!" I would like to roll the 'tape' of the time of production of the text of Bande Mataram.
At the timing of the composition of the song, it would be more than a couple of decades since the British had dropped all mercantile pretensions and gobbled up India as a part of its Empire. The not-too-distant memory of the bitter battles fought and lost in 1857 is still smarting in many a heart. Bengal, whose plentiful wealth had been systematically robbed to enrich the British Treasury for more than a hundred years now, is the seat of governance of this foreign imperial power over whole India. Calcutta, a flourishing metropolis, was turning out an educated middle class whose intellectual and cultural accomplishments far surpassed the expectations of Mill-Macaulay & Co. who wanted nothing more than mediocre servicemen of the Empire by their Indian education policies. Bankim was the first graduate of the newly established Calcutta University after trudging through an incredibly cumbersome and tough syllabus.
Exposure to English language and literature acted as an enabler in the rapid development of Bengali as a modern language. There was a new awakening of love and pride for motherland and mother language, and nostalgia for the freedom that used to belong to the people. Bengal had traded with foreigners for centuries, and even endured Company rule since the fall of Sirajuddowla in 1757. Heavy taxation and privatization of community land caused unprecedented famine that devastated the population. Even so, the effect of outright colonization took some time to sink in. Bankim lamented in one of his essays: "Nowadays we hear a lot about Administrator and rules and regulations. In this land in the olden times you could call a bunyan tree an 'administrator' (shaasonkarta)". By which Bankim is stating unambiguously that we Bangalis were a free, self-ruled nation before the British came and took away our freedom.
Bankim's Bande Mataram was the most powerful, but many of his contemporary poets and composers, both Hindus and Muslims, wrote paeans for Mother Bangla (the word 'bangla' denoting both the land and the language). Two generations after Bankim, my grandfather, the poet Golam Mostafa composed his song showing clear influence of both Bankim and Iqbal: "Shakol desher chaite shera moder Bangladesh, sujala sufala shasya-shyamola snigdho shitalabesh." Kazi Nazrul Islam, one of the greatest of Bengali poets, my nana's friend, wrote: "Namo namo namo Bangladesh momo, chiromonoramo, chiro madhur." Unfortunately the village idiots of Bangladesh today avoid singing Nazrul's song because it has 'namo namo namo' as invocation that is considered a bit too Hindu-like. Invocations are common parlance, and any speaker of that language should be free to use them regardless of the religious identity of that person. Imagine Hindi/Urdu-speaking Hindus not singing A. R. Rahman's "Ma, tujhe salaam" because 'salaam' sounds Muslim-like!
[To be continued with more facts and findings .. .. .. ]
Farida Majid
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