The recent controversy over the national song was rather needless and silly. Anyway, here are my two cents to the entire deal, YouTube vids of the Bharatbala production of two Sanskrit poems written by two very distinguished ummmm... Bengali poets.
How is that for random parochialism. Heh!
Now press play and stand up!
Vande Mataram
Jan Gan Man
OK, so they're not the way you're supposed to sing them, but did you hear the cacophony of the Vande Mataram 'centenary' where out-of-tune politicians ruined he song. Plus will someone please tell me why Arjun Singh is still in the cabinet?
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2 comments:
Vande Mataram is an ode to Bengali nationalism, plain and simple. If you read the entire poem, this becomes amply clear, it's all about Bengal, not about India. I just think it's really amusing that it was appropriated towards the Indian nationalist cause.
And then we have Prem Shankar Jha in Outlook where he states that Muslims don't like Vande Mataram because it's in Sanskrit, a language that Muslims hate! Before Mr. Jha writes such drivel and tripe, why doesn't he at least ask a Muslim person or two, instead of presuming to know what they hate or don't hate.
Maybe he should ask Dr. M.I. Khan, distinguished professor of Sanskrit in Delhi University. Or he could have asked my ex-boyfriend, devout Muslim and student of ancient Indian philosophy (who knew way more about Shankara and Charaka than I did).
Prem Shankar Jha is a clown, plain and simple and makes a mistake that I used to make as a rookie journo - absolutist statements. Anyways, I was having the same 'Bande Mataram' argument with my mother and she told me to stop being so 'Bengali Nationalist'. But yeah, contextually, Ma in the poem is Durga and it does say not so nice things about Muslims, but the reason it might have been appropriated by the Nationalist movement is because of Bengali's disproportionate contribution to that movement in the early days.
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