During the recent discussion commemorating 150 years of the song "Vande Mataram" in the Lok Sabha, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused Jawaharlal Nehru of echoing Muhammad Ali Jinnah's sentiments by agreeing to retain only two stanzas of the song.

The point of contention then, as of now, was what the song actually meant for minorities. It wasn't just deification of the nation that was the concern. It was the background in which the song was written. It is interesting to note here that both Tagore's "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata", from which the national anthem is adopted, and “Amar Sonar Bangla” refer to the nation as “mother”. But neither song has drawn anything close to the strident opposition received by "Vande Mataram". Thus, it is important to analyse the context in which the song was written and interpreted to properly make sense of the criticism.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was one of the earliest Bengali novelists. Contrary to popular perceptions, Bankim's literary legacy extends far beyond the song he is most associated with. His 1865-novel Durgeshnandini set as a medieval historical romance is said to have inaugurated Bengali modern literature. Bankim’s expansive works like the 1864 English novel Rajmohan's Wife questioned the feudal structure and tackled contentious issues like adultery in a strictly Victorian mould while at the same time aimed to be representative of the emerging national identity. The most politically influential among his novels though was Anandamath published in 1882 and later translated by Aurobindo Ghosh and his brother Barin Ghose in 1909.

The deification of the nation through the image of "Bharat Mata" (Mother India) became a crucial element of the development of nationalism. It is important to note here that personification of the nation as such is not unique to Indian nationalism. "Marianne" in France, "Columbia" in the United States and "Britannia" in the United Kingdom all serve the same purpose. Nevertheless, the specifics of the representation, its origins and its significance is unique.

As the debates on Sati that Hindu reformers like Ram Mohan Roy participated in show, these reforms aimed to uplift women vacillated between acknowledging female agency and instrumentalising the struggles of women as sites for contending "authentic traditions". It is in this template that Bharat Mata was constructed. Ironically, the symbolism of "Mother India" developed alongside the portrayal of Queen Victoria as Mother Goddess in Bengal.

Bengali poets lamented that "Mother Victoria", in whom they have taken shelter and whose feet they touch, has abandoned her children. The transformation occurred from this "unseen, remote, foreign mother to Mother India, a mother more authentic, more giving and very close to the Indian child".

Bankim provided the clearest articulation of "Bharat Mata" as a warrior deity inspiring Hindu warrior saints to revolt against the East India Company. The imagery of Mother India is explicitly taken from the Shakti image of the Hindu Goddess Kali and Durga. The Mother portrayed by Bankim is fierce, "blackened and shrouded in darkness". She is "naked. And because the whole land is a burning-ground, she is garlanded with skulls". This transmogrification of Goddess Kali into Mother India exists alongside anti-Muslim sentiments in Bankim's work.

The decline of Bengal is traced back to Muslims. The character Bhabananda in the novel quips, "We’ve lost our religious way of life, our caste status, our self-respect, our family connections – and now we're about to lose our lives! If we don't get rid of these bearded degenerates will anything be left of our Hindu identity?"

The poem "Bande Mataram" (I bow to thee, Mother) eulogising "Bharat Mata" became a rallying cry for the nationalist movement and was also the name of the weekly newspaper Aurobindo later edited.

Aurobindo's adoption of Bharat Mata is in complete consonance with the Shakti symbolism that Bankim conjures. In Aurobindo's words:

"For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha-Mardini (Durga) sprang into being from the Shaktis of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati (Goddess Bharati), is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred millions of people."

Aurobindo's engagement with Bankim is much deeper than the mere utilisation of his symbols. For Aurobindo, Bankim refined the style of Bengali literature by incorporating the best elements of Europe. This was due to his "unfailing sense of beauty". Thus, in Bankim, one does not find "the hideous grotesques of old Hindu Art, the monkey-rabble of Ram and the ten heads of Ravan". This is not merely an aesthetic assessment. It is reflective of an internalisation of Victorian and Evangelical critique of Hindu symbolism.

Even as Aurobindo wanted to escape the "unwise contempt for things Bengali", he still took refuge in a refined, gracious nationalism that merely inverted the Orientalist gaze. While there is celebration for English being driven out of the stream of literature in Bengal, there is also an acknowledgement that the elevation of Bengali from a dialect to a language came through romanticism. In Aurobindo's mind, Bankim was responsible for creating the Bengali nation and arousing the sentiment of the nation through his production of literature that is comparable to "the proudest classics of modern Europe".

The explicit Hindu connotations, along with its anti-Muslim background, is what makes "Bande Mataram" as contentious as it is. This is not to say that it is unsalvageable. Nehru's The Discovery of India starts with an evocation of "Bharat Mata" as the representation of the millions of people of India. Similarly, for Aurobindo, the ascetic spirit symbolises the "name of Kali" for the Hindus and "to the Mohammedan it spurs to action for the glory of Islam". While the Muslims were to be included as sons of the same mother India, the fact that the nation being envisioned was "Hindu" in its spirit was unmistakable.

Anwesh Satpathy is a columnist and has a background in Global Affairs from King’s College London.

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