Makers of the fountain pen ink, Sulekha, once upon a time a household name in India and again back in business, have come out with a collector’s set to mark 150 years of the national song, Vande Mataram.
The limited edition box includes an illustrated booklet containing select facts about the song, one of them being that Vande Mataram was originally set to tune by Jadunath Bhattacharya in a fusion of Raag Mallar and Taal Qawwali, a Sufi music tradition.
“The music was scored by Jadunath Bhattacharyya of Bhatpara. The original tune was based on Raag Mallar and Taal Qawwali. Innumerable artists have rendered the song according to their own melodic interpretations since then,” the booklet claimed about the song composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.
It further said that Rabindranath Tagore first publicly sang the Vande Mataram at the 1896 Indian National Congress session in what was then Calcutta, “setting its tune and popularising its first two stanzas as a powerful Swadeshi anthem”. It rose as the rallying cry during the movement that emerged in response to the British decision to Partition Bengal in 1905, and became central to the wider struggle for Indian independence, finally earning the status of National Song.
