Vande Mataram

Vande Mataram was composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and first published in the literary journal Bangadarshan on November 7, 1875. It was later incorporated into his novel Anandamath (1882). The song became a rallying anthem of the Indian independence movement, sung at the 1896 session of the Indian National Congress when Rabindranath Tagore set it to music. However, controversy about the song's content — particularly stanzas referencing Hindu goddesses Durga and Lakshmi — led to a deliberate political compromise: in October 1937, the Indian National Congress, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, formally adopted only the first two stanzas as the version to be used at public gatherings, setting aside the later stanzas to address Muslim community concerns. On January 24, 1950, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted Vande Mataram as the national song, with President Rajendra Prasad affirming it should be honoured equally with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana. The implicit understanding was that the two-stanza convention established in 1937 continued.