My son was watching the cricket match between India and Australia on his computer when I called him at his college in America at noon today (here in Singapore; it was close to midnight for him). Then, about an hour ago, I spoke to my wife in Calcutta (Kolkata). She said she had to go to her college for the flag hoisting ceremony.
India is celebrating Republic Day today. For the first time, they could not hold the ceremony outdoors but had to hoist the flag in the college auditorium because of heavy rain, she said.
How awful, I thought, having to go in the rain for a college function when you could be watching the cricket match on television instead. I am likely to feel more patriotic watching India play than singing the national anthem at a flag hoisting ceremony.
I remember a long time ago the national anthem used to be played at the end of film shows in Calcutta and we had to stand and wait till the end of the song before leaving the auditorium. I just found out that the official version of the Indian national anthem is only 52 seconds long, but it used to seem much longer then.
We never had to sing the national anthem in school, so on the few occasions I did have to sing it, I would stumble over the words and try to lip synch my way out. The flowery language made the words difficult to remember.
The irony is I am a Bengali and the Indian national anthem is written in Bengali — and not in Hindi, the official language. But it is written in a chaste, Sanskritised Bengali we don’t use in everyday language.
It was written by Rabindranath Tagore, whose poems are perhaps more consistently beautiful than those of any poet in the English language. Wordsworth can be boring, but not Tagore. He is the master of euphony. His prose has the grace of Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater and George Santayana while his poetry has to be read aloud to be fully enjoyed like the poems of Dylan Thomas. Unlike Dylan Thomas, however, he can be easily understood — if one knows the words he uses. His Bengali runs the gamut from the simple to the baroque.
Unlike most Bengalis, I am not fond of Rabindra sangeet, the music of Tagore. Give me rock ‘n’ roll and the blues any day. And Jana Gana Mana, written in 1911, has that Victorian pomp and grandeur which can be uplifting but also windy.
Why can’t we have something more contemporary, I asked myself — and then I listened to Jana Gana Mana, both the official version, and this video. And I was strangely moved.
(Republic Day marks the adoption of India’s republican constitution in 1950 — three years after independence from Britain. — BBC. So this video must have been recorded in 2000.)
The lyrics
Jana-gana-mana-adhinayaka, jaya he
Bharata-bhagya-vidhata.
Punjab-Sindh-Gujarat-Maratha
Dravida-Utkala-Banga
Vindhya-Himachala-Yamuna-Ganga
Uchchala-Jaladhi-taranga.
Tava shubha name jage,
Tava shubha asisa mange,
Gahe tava jaya gatha,
Jana-gana-mangala-dayaka jaya he
Bharata-bhagya-vidhata.
Jaya he, jaya he, jaya he,
Jaya jaya jaya, jaya he!
English translation
Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
dispenser of India’s destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sind,
Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
mingles in the music of Jamuna and Ganges and is
chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
thou dispenser of India’s destiny.
Victory, victory, victory to thee.
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