Rabindranath Tagore himself has strongly denied that the poem (which incidentally has five stanzas - the first one of which was adopted as the anthem) was written in honour of King George V, the then ruler of British India. We must therefore leave it at that.
It is true however that Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru chose this to be the national anthem instead of "vande mataram" because [1] He did not want the new nation to begin on a controversial note as would have happened due to strong Muslim objection to bowing (vande..) to the motherland (mataram) because Islam prohibits doing so before anyone other than Allah - (I think the objection persists even today) & [2] The ease with which "jana gana mana.." can be understood, sung and played by a band.
Amit Shesh in his comments has rightly said that probably because of the difficulty in a lay person singing the US - star spangled banner - it is mostly confined to expert renditions at football matches. Now for the full verbatim meaning:
जन गण मन अधिनायक जय हे , भारत भाग्य विधाता
May you , the leader of leaders (adhinayak) of our people, communities and minds and the determiner of Bharat's destiny (bhagya vidhata) be victorious (jaya)
पंजाब सिंध गुजरात मराठा द्राविड उत्कल बंग
Here everything is obvious except maybe Utkal (Orissa), Bang (whole of undivided Bengal including present Bangladesh and the seven north eastern sister states) & Dravid (whole of south India
विन्ध्य हिमाचल यमुना गंगा , उछ्छल जलधि तरंग
We have here two famous and representative mountain ranges and description of the oceans which have high rise waves (uchhal tarang). All this is basically describing our country so that we ask all of it to be blessed.
तव शुभ नामे जागे , तव शुभ आशीष मागे
We awaken oursleves taking your name and we ask for your blessings
गाये तव जय गाथा
We sing the story (gatha) of your victory (jaya)
Here onwards it is a repetition of the above words until we end the anthem with a clarion call for his victory (jaya he ...).
So our national anthem is a sort of prayer (to the almighty GOD - the determiner of our destiny and the controller of our souls) to bless our nation.
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5 comments:
One of the lines is "jaladhi taranga" and not "jala dit ranga". It refers to the sound made by flowing water.
The wikipedia page on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jana_Gana_Mana . Among other things it talks about the possibility of George V vs. God as the intended recipient of this prayer.
In the outset of many mails being circulated and things talked about here also about the "Jana Gana Mana" being written for the king who was to visit India. My common sense doesnt allow me to believe in that stuff because firstly the if we buy the fact then i guess the meaning/interpretation talks more about the nation than the so called ruler, and if we go by what the english people were, they would have hated it to the core for the kind of treatment they had been giving us and what kind of people they thought they were. For an anthem to be written for the king, they would need 90% mention of the king and may be 5% of the country, but in our case its totally inverse. So I guess I would disagree on that fact that these set of lines were written for the king. As we are talking about Clear Fundas...there can be no clearer meaning of the anthem than what has been told to us here. Real example of how a blog shoudl be as per its name...CLEAR FUNDA!!
We as so called responsible citizens of India should really understand what we really need to be in order to be even become eligible to be called "Responsible". People talk about big things...but I guess all our efforts would remain incomplete if we fail to recognise its basic criteria. I mean people dont even know the meaning of what they say, follow or do and just blindly do it, thats why they say that our country is so prone to falling to others because we make our own enemies in the name of all these things, and others took undue advantage of us, like the English people did. Its rather a thing to feel guilty that a set of people and a country of a size of one of our states, comes and rules us and continued to do it for a period more than a century.
People should realise that our National Anthem is one set of lines which consists of every and I say every part of our country, I guess that covers everyone and thats what Really India is all about!! An Example of secularism and Democracy.
The People!! The Republic!! and Our Minds!! this is what all JANA GANA MANA is all about and should be as clear as possible. All for one nation and ONE Nation for ALL!!
In all the hoch poch of the working culture and time bars and Virtual world existances and out of the heavy routines that we are always in, whenever we hear or say the National Anthem, there is always a strange feeling in our minds, goosebumps, face upright. This is that feelign which many people dont realise what it is but they sure feel it!! Everyone of us does. Whether it is in our School annual functions, the 26th or 15th or even at the beginning of a movie in a swanky multiplex. What brings us all together is nothing but only this feeling of being one!! Thats why it is called " NATIONAL ANTHEM"...it is called "JANA GANA MANA"....All for one ONE for all!! "Jaya he"!!
JAYA HIND!!
Dear sir,
Thanks for the informative mail.
It is really heartening that almost every citizen of India is able to sing our National Anthem. The same is definitely not true of USA!
Rotary Club of Nasik sings the National Anthem at the beginning of all weekly meetings. The only problem is that people sing the anthem at different pace. the older a person gets, the slower is the tempo! The condition about rendering it in 50 seconds should be firmly emphasized.
Ravi Shivde
Congrats Prakash for hosting this blog. Have followed it since yesterday. Do you remember Rajeev Dixit of Ajadi Bachao Andolan. He was propogating adoption of Vande Mataram as the national anthem and did explain in detail the true meaning of our national anthem as interpreted by him. Have a good day.
Bharat
Very good and.. Clear cut.. Blog.. Proud to be an indian
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