Let There Be Reform Too When the Nation Is Divided Over Its National Anthem: The Case of Bangladesh (A Politico-Literary Perspective)
Jalal Uddin Khan
The article argues that Bangladesh's current national anthem is not representative of the general opinion; it especially fails to capture the spirit of the freedom struggle which was won with great sacrifices. A national anthem should also reflect the nation's religio-cultural ethos.
The national anthems of India, Canada, France, the USA and the UK, for example, are some of those which reflect these countries' national ethos, are directly associated with the key turning events in their history and, therefore, are widely acceptable.
As Australia had a national debate, even plebiscite, before adopting its national anthem and Spain had once a competition to write a new national anthem (although no winner was declared and the on-again off-again old one was retained), Bangladesh, too, may follow the precedent in order to adopt a new national anthem.)
"O mankind! We have…made you into nations and tribes, that you may
know one another."
The Qu'ran, Surah Al-Hujurat: 13.
"Patriotism is part of Faith in Allah (God)."
Traditional Islamic Saying (not Hadith).
"Mother and motherland are more to be proud of than heaven."
The Ramayana by Valmiki
Together with a name and a national flag, a national anthem is one of the basics by which a nation identifies itself from the time of its birth. It is among the certain core credentials of great symbolic and emotional significance by which a nation binds and unifies itself, crystallizes whatever loose and fluid elements there may exist in cementing its nationhood and establishes the concrete image of its national integrity and identity.
Unfortunately, Bangladesh's national anthem, I believe, is far from meeting those noble and lofty expectations. In fact, it seems to miserably fall short of achieving the fundamental goals and aspirations of national significance.
Thirty-five years after the independence, the people of Bangladesh still do not seem to be very happy and excited about their national anthem and they seem to continue to feel a great degree of unease and discomfort about it. Despite the glory that was Rabindranath Tagore, the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature, a sane, cool and thinking Bangladeshi cannot agree that one of his songs ("Amar Sonar Bangla," i.e., "My Golden Bengal") has been chosen as the national anthem of Bangladesh upon its emergence as an independent country in 1971.
I think there are many Bangladeshis who are deeply disturbed and dispirited by their current national anthem and who as such will agree with the following details of the argument against it.
There is no doubt that Tagore is the greatest Bengali writer ever. But that he occupies the most illustrious seat on the Bengali Parnassus does not necessarily justify the high status given to his song "Amar Sonar Bangla" in this independent, sovereign and Muslim-majority country.
Not only one can sincerely question the wisdom and even the political correctness of such a choice but also doubt that any work by Tagore can ever be made Bangladesh's national anthem. Like dozens of other songs and poems written contemporaneously as well as in the past by others, this Tagore piece undoubtedly delighted and inspired us during our liberation struggle. It did so, in my view, by virtue of its romantic lyricism and romantic love for Bengali soil and seasonal beauty.
However, it is not a classic of artistic and thematic significance and does not rise to the level of lofty dignity and sublime gravity expected of a national anthem. There is no unique distinctiveness about its literary merit. Moreover, being remote in its origin from the dream and birth of Bangladesh as an independent nation, the connection of the song with the time and circumstance of Bangladesh's liberation struggle is too thin for it to deserve such a supreme attention and status.
Therefore, despite the fact that the song does occupy a place, as do many other songs and poems composed during and before the liberation struggle, in the hearts and minds of the people of Bangladesh, an objective and dispassionate mind cannot be convinced that it deserves the prestige of being singled out as the national anthem of the country. Let me try to explain a few things in some more detail:
1. The song is by no means an extraordinarily great one, whether aesthetically or spiritually. By no account, whether style or content, it is unique or distinguished. There is no underlying depth of meaning nor is it written in an exalted public voice, as is the case with many other national anthems around the world. Like many other Tagore poems, it is just a simple reflective nature poem in a conventional style of langurous inward bent.
Not surprisingly, the song is sung in the Indian province of West Bengal just as any other song by Tagore without the due respect normally accorded to a country's national anthem. Its images drawn from traditional rural Bengal are trite and hackneyed by virtue of their having been overused in Bengali literature.
Even the opening verse ("My Golden Bengal") is a cliche, infected with euphemism. The whole poem/song is an exercise in decadent emotionalism. As a fellow Bangladeshi friend of mine currently teaching at an Australian University rightly put it, "Instead of instilling a patriotic passion, the song lulls one to a spontaneous doze. It lacks the rhythm and the cadence that are normally associated with national anthems, whose lyrics, tune and beat stimulate one's sense of nationalism and patriotism."
2. The song fails to faithfully represent the landscape of today's Bangladesh, of which images such as mango groves and banyan trees are hardly characteristic. Unlike the "Shapla" (water-lily), rightly chosen national flower of Bangladesh, mango groves and banyan trees do not grow in plenty and are rarely a common sight because they are not widely or uniformly found all over the country.
A few scattered mango groves may be seen only in the north-western part of Bangladesh, extending into India, where the poet's family estate was once headquartered for a time in Shelidah, Kushtia. He composed the song in the post-partition Bengal (1905) when the Padma used to be in the beauty of her full tide. It is the then somewhat picturesque landscape of that region that finds expression in the poem.
Unfortunately, with the geographical and geological changes over the passage of time, made controversial and complicated by the selfish political agenda of the neighboring countries, the glory of the landscape has been in steady decline to the extent that the full-flowing Padma is not there any more.
The landscape features which were once the object of lovely charm are now conspicuous by their absence not only in that part but also in the remaining larger part of Bangladesh. The Padma, probably alluded to in the river-imagery of the song, is now empty of its nourishing waters, running very low because of the contemporary regional geopolitics. At present her beauty and glory are a thing of the past.
Since there is in the song no true reflection of the broad spectrum of the natural beauty of Bangladesh and since it does not smack of her painful emergence, it cannot be said to have a representative quality about it. As a result the nation as a whole cannot really identify with the material particularities of the poem. To put it metaphorically, we must not lose the forest for trees.
A national anthem ought to be characterized by a generalizing and universalizing principle suggesting not simply the idea of a free country with a mass of land born with its specific borders but a broad outline of her cherished ideals and farsighted visions. A quick glance at the lyrics of the national anthems of Canada, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, India or Pakistan, for example, is sufficient to understand what I mean by noble and high-spirited generalizations found in a national anthem.
3. Tagore wrote "Amar Sonar Bangla" for the cause of undivided Bengal led by Hindu Zemindars (big land owners) and their clearly communal Swadeshi Movement against the 1905 Partition of Bengal. While Muslims in general, elites and masses alike of East Bengal, supported the Partition, Tagore and the fellow Hindu leaders opposed it for fear of losing influence, labor and landed estates in East Bengal.
He wrote "Amar Sonar Bangla" to encourage and inspire the strong supporters of the Swadeshi Movement (1905-11) who in fact used to sing the song in their protest meetings in Calcutta. (Here it is worth mentioning that it was the same people—Hindu elites including Tagore—who unfortunately opposed the idea of Dhaka University during 1914-20 just as the Calcutta-based Hindu lawyers at that time opposed the establishment of a High Court in Dhaka).
To repeat, Tagore wrote the song with the thought of the united Bengal under the greater India in mind, not that of an independent Bangladesh. As such, it was not connected with even the dream of the emergence of Bangladesh as a separate political entity with its own geographical boundary---the 55,126 sq. miles area for which thousands of our people had to die.
Our countrymen sacrificed their lives for Bangladesh and its soil, not a bit of the Indian. "Amar Sonar Bangla" is therefore far from suggesting even a remote hint with regard to the political and geographical independence of the country which came into being as Bangladesh.
Having nothing to do with the dynamics of a national struggle and its costly build-up over a long period of time, the song fails to evoke a sense of political and cultural history of the geographical area of its own borders called Bangladesh. It is far from having any relation whatsoever with the defining moment of the language movement of 1952 and the decisive moment of the late sixties and early seventies when Bangladeshis fought for their independent nationhood.
4. A comparison of "Amar Sonar Bangla" with Tagore's "Jana-Gana-Mana-Adhinayaka Jaya Hey" and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's "Bande Mataram!," which are India's national anthem and national song respectively and which were directly connected with the contemporary politics of Indian nationalism clearly reveals "Amar Sonar Bangla"-'s inferiority in terms of gravity and dignity, style and diction as well as its having been against the dream and emergence of Bangladesh.
Composed in 1911, "Jana-gana-mana" is not only remarkable in its excellent use of generalizations that embrace the whole of India as a geopolitical existence but also saturated with a spirit of high poetical vision and transcendence, which is lacking in "Amar Sonar Bangla." Only the first stanza of the five-stanza "Jana-gana-mana" was adopted as the national anthem of India in 1950.
The song was directly connected with the visit of King George V to India in December of 1911 when the British monarch declared, mainly according to the wish of the Bengali Hindus mostly living in West Bengal, the cancellation of the 1905 partition of Bengal. The Indian National Congress, therefore, warmly welcomed the king to Calcutta and had "Jana-gana-mana" sung in its December 27 session of that year.
However, Rabindranath did not, by his own admission, write the song as a eulogy to the king as he was asked to do by many members of the Congress, including his good friend Sir Ashotosh. Instead, he produced something stately and deeply spiritual, keeping in tune with his philosophy of life.
As such, the song is a praise of an abstract and metaphysical supreme power or deity (above and beyond the temporal power as represented by King George) for having made India great and beautiful. During the Second World War when Subhas Chandra Bose founded the Free India League in Berlin, it was decided that "Jana-gana-mana," played on the Orchestra for the first time in a ceremony in Hamburg in 1942, should be adopted as the national anthem of India.
By contrast, "Amar Sonar Bangla" falls short not only on the matter of direct connectedness with the most important national event, that is, the independence of Bangladesh but also in the power to generate deeper philosophical reflection and forward-looking political dynamism.
5. Bankim's "Bande Mataram!" meaning "Hail the Mother" or "Hail to the Motherland" was written in 1876. These were the opening words of a song in his last novel Anandamath ("The Monastery of Joy"). Adopted as the national song at the Varanasi session of the All India Congress Committee on September 7, 1905, the song was used to push for the nationalist agenda during the Hindu-dominated Swadeshi Movement in the wake of the 1905 partition of Bengal.
It was the first Bengali nationalist song of note, primarily from the Hindu point of view, to the extent of being regarded as the national anthem of India during the first phase of Indian nationalism. The two Sanskrit words saluting the concept of the earth as the mother of every Indian constituted a memorable lyric chant with the rest of the song forming the powerful driving force in India's struggle for freedom.
The first three stanzas describe India's natural beauty and bounty while the rest is about the rising Indian nationalism of the day with the last two stanzas personifying the country as Durga, the terrible ten-armed Hindu goddess worshipped every autumn in Bengal.
Since the words of the song were thus directly linked to a Hindu deity, they were likely to hurt Muslim sensitivities at a time when there was a need for a nationalist song that would unite all communities in India.
No wonder Muslims have always objected to "Bande Mataram," saying that as a hymn to Durga equating the nation to a deity and calling for the devotee to bow down in respect, it went against the tenets of Islam to sing it. It is from such consideration that Muslims in India, despite a non-binding central government directive, refrained from reciting the song (the first two stanzas) on September 7 this year (2006) to mark the culmination of its year-long centenary celebrations.
Even the Indian Sikh community did not obey the government order because it thought the song spread the message of only one religion and did not include the aspirations of the religious minorities in the country.
Moreover, the description of India in the song is more true and appropriate about Bengal than India as a whole. As a result, neither Muslims nor all Hindus could be expected to be sympathetic to the song. Considering its potential for conflict, "Bande Mataram" was dropped as a candidate for India's national anthem. Tagore, Subash Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru—all three supported the move (see Tagore's letter to Bose, 19 Oct 1937).
Following the tone of aggressive and reactionary conservatism in religious and social matters in Bankim's later works, the Bande Mataram "has been identified with--and sometimes appropriated by--the disturbing religious nationalism manifest in India today…In recent years, it has also found more sinister political use" (Sukanta Chauduri, "History out of Fiction," New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur, Oct. 18, 2000).
6. Although Tagore spent some time in what was then East Bengal (and afterwards East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) to take care of his paternal landed property, he was not born in Bangladesh. His birthplace is Calcutta, West Bengal, which has all along been a part of India. So, by birth, nationality and political identity, he was, still is, and will continue to be an Indian, not a Bangladeshi.
Having always believed in the wholeness of an unfragmented all-India until his death in 1941, he was never even a dreamer of the political independence of Bengal as a whole, let alone Bangladesh, whereas our people shed their blood and lost their lives for the land of Bangladesh demarcated by its geographic borders. It is, therefore, not too much to expect our national anthem to be expressing a sense of the patriotic political struggle for our independent nationhood and reflecting a sense of the dream that was behind it.
Choice of a national anthem must not depend on the neighborly help of a country during a critical moment. It must not be dictated by the need for the immediate appeasement of a neighbor in consequence of that neighbor's help in times of crisis. The need for reward for a neighbor may be met by various other political means.
7. In religion Tagore was not one of the majority of the population of Bangladesh, which is overwhelmingly Muslim. While it may sound somewhat racial, communal and sectarian, the fact of the matter is that we cannot ignore the larger reality of the religious sentiment of the overwhelming majority.
Something which is essentially a matter of national consensus and with which all the people of the nation ought to be able to warmly identify for ages, generations and centuries must not be imposed on a nation from a narrow emotional or political consideration of the moment. To reach a decision about which song/poem should be the national anthem of the country is not to take the advantage of striking the iron when it is hot.
Instead, it is a matter of cool, informed, detached and dispassionate judgment keeping the interest of the country and the nation in view so that any unnecessary controversies in the future may be avoided. In the case of such a unifying national symbolism -- a priceless gift that a nation earns as a result of its independence and sovereignty -- we have to be sensitive to the deeply embedded collective psyche formed by the soil, culture and religion of the land, not necessarily to the partisan interests of certain political elements.
Religion being one of the most deeply rooted and most powerful human passions, we as a nation are not ready and should not be expected to be ready to accept a song by a member of the religious minority who was not even born here as our national anthem. The geography and the demography of the population of Bangladesh give its majority an inviolable natural right to have a national anthem with which they feel highly comfortable and connected.
This does not mean that it has to be another "Bande Mataram," a Muslim version of a religious hymn to God. However, the choice should be such that it is justly and naturally expected to express a certain degree of Muslim ethos without alienating the religious minority. After all, a national anthem ought to do with the envisioning of the good for the entire nation united in the common bond of patriotic love and adoration for the native soil under the Almighty Creator and the nurturing of that bond heartily.
The Indians did not make a work by a member of their minority Muslims, Sikhs or Christians their national anthem. They did not care to be politically correct (to use that overused and unappealing cliché) and they did not commit the folly of being politically correct. They were right not to have done so.
Political correctness is a euphemism for the cheap, easy and shortcut meant to accommodate the folly of the weak. We do not have any quarrel with the choice of the wise Indians. Tagore the poet is certainly not at issue here; the creative artist in him is above the barrier of national borders.
However, it is entirely different to use him in the politically and nationalistically sensitive context in which the majority of the people, their religion, their history and the very historic occasion of their independence are indeed the most important determining factors.
Let me give some examples to illustrate the direct relation a national anthem bears either to the key political event or the major religion of a country. France's national anthem was composed in 1792 during the Revolution and the revolutionary army marched on singing it.
One unknown patriot, Henry Carey, composed the British national anthem "God Save the King" on the occasion of the birthday of George II in early 1740s. First publicly sung in 1745 during the second Jacobite rebellion of the Catholics in Scotland on behalf of the Stuart claimant of the British throne, "God Save the King" is a prayer to God to grant long life and reign to the protestant George II of German Hanoverian dynasty and to give victory to the forces loyal to him.
With its earliest known form slightly differing from the current wording and melody, it is a song of two small stanzas, only the first of which is alive in practice as the national anthem of Britain. The last verses calling for the suppression of the Scots have been entirely forgotten.
Written about the same period, in 1740, another highly popular song, "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson, a minor English poet, has been enjoying the equivalent status of Carey's "God Save the King." Suffused with the noble sentiments of loyalty, bravery and national glory, "Rule, Britannia" would continue to be "the political hymn of the country," as the poet Robert Southey predicted, "as long as she maintains her political power."
The national anthem of the United States illustrates the direct relation it bears to that country's war of independence. Francis Scott Key's "The Star-Spangled Banner" replaced "America" as its national anthem in 1931 when it was passed in the US Congress.
"The Star-Spangled Banner" was composed in 1814 during the Anglo-American War. Singing the praise and victory of his country against the British in impassioned public tone, Scott Key's four-stanza poem has the title as a refrain, descriptive of the American national flag, and ends with the motto, "In God is Our Trust!" Sung to the tune of an old English drinking song, "The Star-Spangled Banner" used to be popular with the US military since it had been written. As far as Scott Key himself is concerned, he was not a poet, nor a writer; he was just a lawyer in Washington, D.C.
The above-mentioned examples of France, Britain, United States, and India (and to which we can add Pakistan and many other countries) amply demonstrate how a national anthem is deeply connected with the political aspirations and religious spirit of a people, how it is deeply rooted in the reality of time and place, and yet how it transcends the immediate occasion by virtue of its high and dignified manner of expression.
In contrast to our national anthem, our national flag is an absolutely terrific choice—a nice combination of our land and the struggle of our people for our freedom. A song/poem which does not rise to such a comprehensive and prospective magnitude does not deserve to be a national anthem. It could be brief but not narrow in compass. Avoiding subjective personalization, it should employ broad generalizations of a high and noble vision.
A national anthem need not come from the pen of a great writer-philosopher nor a major poet be necessarily commissioned to compose one unless the situation compels such a procedure. The long history of Canada's national anthem ("O Canada"), originally written in French, is such that initially there was some thought of holding a competition for such a hymn to be performed on the occasion of the national congress of the French Canadians in Quebec, which coincided with the St. Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations in June 1880.
But that idea was dropped because of time constraint and finally Judge Adolphe-Basile Routhier was commissioned for the purpose early in the year. Routhier's French original with its several English versions gained steadily in popularity until it was proclaimed Canada's national anthem in 1980 along with its official English version.
In our case, perhaps there must be a rich store of interesting works available to choose from. Once the nation agrees in principle that the current national anthem is not suitable, it should not be a difficult job for a designated body of writers and intellectuals, including Islamic thinkers and scholars, to unanimously settle on one such work which would meet the desired criteria connected with the eventful past of the emergence of Bangladesh and her democratically diverse yet unified people.
One suggestion is that there should be some exhaustive surveys of national opinion, untainted by any political publicity whatsoever. Australia is a case in point. "Advance Australia Fair," composed in 1878, was proclaimed the Australian national anthem in 1984 following years of debate.
There was a national opinion poll of 60,000 people in 1974, followed by a nationwide plebiscite in 1977. On each occasion the song was the preferred choice for the national anthem. To date, Australian lawmakers still debate its future, some of them even attacking it as "boring, outdated, and meaningless" and calling for it to be changed.
National capitals move and change, national flags change and so do national anthems. So why should Bangladesh continue to keep the matter divisive and unresolved and not move forward in quest of a widely acceptable and thereby pretty permanent solution in the interest of our dear mother land, our Patrie (meaning "fatherland" / "pitribhumi"), our Vaterland (also meaning "fatherland") and our Heimat (meaning one's own country / "Apon Desh") as the French and the Germans are proud to call their homeland.
Jalal Khan, E Mail : jukhan@gmail.com
(This is the final {revised and updated} version of the above article of which the earlier drafts not without some weaknesses and infelicities were published in the following journals: Asian Thought & Society: An International Review (SUNY Stony Brook), Vol. XXV, No. 74, 2000, pp.157-161; Politics, Administration and Change (U. of New England, Australia), No. 34, 2000, pp. 68-74; New Quest (India), No. 152, April-June 2003, pp. 29-35; Studies on Islam (Hamdard University, India), Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2005, pp. 99-108).
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