Friday, Dec 27, 2013
Kolkata: December 27 marked 102 years of India’s national anthem, the day “Jana Gana Mana” was first sung in 1911 at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress.
The day was celebrated all over India as students in schools, colleges and universities sang the song, which basically identifies with the unity among the various states that now makes the Indian subcontinent.
“The idea of a united India is glorified in this song like no other. The very thought that India today survives as one political entity, which was seriously in doubt during the initial years of independence, makes the song the most patriotic literary creation of the country,” said music director Sunil Prabhu.
However, the original song has undergone some tonal treatment from what was original written by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and was officially adopted by the Constitutional Assembly as the Indian National Anthem on January 24, 1950.
“From a song sung by people without any musical accompaniments, the song is now mostly sung by the band hence some changes have been made over the years,” said director of National Archives Museum.
Tagore translated “Jana Gana Mana” from Bengali to English and also set it to music in 1919 at the Besant Theosophical College in Madanapalle a town located in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
The students of the college sang the song in public for the first time in the presence of Tagore on February 28, 1919. Much later it was translated into Hindi by Abid Ali.
Over years, though the song has transcended from march song to a more patriotic fervour and has been translated into several other Indian languages.
By Archisman Dinda Correspondent
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