Ronojoy Sen - Bande Mataram!: Song, Slogan, Sentiment

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory in the Indian general elections for the third time at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters in New Delhi, he ended his speech by chanting Bande (bow) several times in rapid succession, getting the audience to reply Mataram (mother) on each occasion. The chants of Bande Mataram and Bharat Mata ki jai (Victory to Mother India) were common to most campaign rallies by Modi as well as other senior BJP leaders during the six-week election. The song Bande Mataram can be traced to Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s well-known novel, Anandamath (1892). Bankim is also central to the powerful formulation of the nation as mother goddess. This presentation looks at the many strands of the intellectual journey of the song Bande Mataram, which is independent India’s official song (as opposed to the national anthem), from the pages of Bankim’s novel to becoming a defining feature of Hindu nationalism. There were several personalities who carried forward the ideas of Bankim in different ways and turned Bande Mataram into a potent political slogan during the Swadeshi movement. Some of the central figures in this story are Aurobindo Ghose, who was inspired by both the slogan, Bande Mataram, and the connection between the nation and the mother goddess, as well as his contemporary Bipin Chandra Pal. Rabindranath Tagore too is a critical figure both as the person who set the song to tune and as someone who was alive to its communal interpretation.

About the Speaker

Dr Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies and the South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has worked for over a decade with leading Indian newspapers, most recently as an editor for The Times of India. His latest book is House of the People: Parliament and the Making of Indian Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He is also the author of Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press/Penguin, 2015) and Articles of Faith: Religion, Secularism, and the Indian Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 2010; revised ed. 2018). He has edited several books, the latest being Media at Work in China and India (Sage, 2015). He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and read history at Presidency College, Calcutta. He has held visiting fellowships or positions at Cornell University, Wilson Center, National Endowment for Democracy, the East-West Center Washington and the International Olympic Museum.