The Hindu : Front Page : National song sung in schools, colleges

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Friday, Sep 08, 2006

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National song sung in schools, colleges

A. Jayaram

Gangubhai Hangal wants it to be sung in its original style Gangubai Hangal wants it to be sung in its original style

BANGALORE: Children and youth across the State sang Vande Mataram at their mellifluous best to mark the centenary of its rendering at the Kolkata session of the Congress in 1906. Dadabhai Naoroji presided over the session held that year following Lord Curzon's division of Bengal.

The song is much old, having been composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterji and included in his novel Anand Math. It was B. Venkatacharya who introduced Vande Mataram to the erstwhile princely State of Mysore, if not Karnataka as a whole, through his translations of Bankim Chandra Chatterji's Bengali novels into Kannada. The translation was done at the turn of the 19th century and some of those Bengali novels were prescribed as textbooks in schools.

It was sung at the Belgaum session of the Congress in 1924, which was presided over by Mahatma Gandhi, and the only one to be held in Karnataka in pre-Independence days.

The one who rendered the invocation was a child by the name of Gangubai Hangal, the legendary musician who is with us today. Ms. Hangal has disfavoured singing of Vande Mataram in the present-day populist style. She said in Hubli on Thursday that it should be rendered only in its original style.

Even today, its singing in public is not without its quota of annoyance and displeasure. Some of the city's BJP leaders claimed that Commissioner of Police Neelam Achyut Rao banned its singing in public and told his officers to round up anyone found doing so. Mr. Rao denied the allegation later in the day. BJP leaders and workers sang it at Town Hall Junction and at the party office in Malleswaram.

`Indians first'

Vande Mataram was on Tuesday sung in some of the minority-run educational institutions. The head of one of the institutions told a television channel that they were Indians first and Muslims next. The faculty and students of Bangalore University, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum, and members of Congress Seva Dal sang it.

All the teaching, non-teaching and students of Bangalore University departments and affiliated colleges attended the Vande Mataram singing session.

At Congress Bhavan, Seva Dal workers sang the national song. Seva Dal chief Sankaragouda H. Patil said the Congress had officially accepted the song on September 7, 1906.

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