New Delhi: This Wednesday (October 1), the Union cabinet of the Narendra Modi government announced that it would celebrate, countrywide, the ‘150th anniversary’ of Vande Mataram, with information and broadcasting minister Ashwini Vaishnaw stating that it was in keeping with the role the song had played during the freedom struggle.

News reports underlined that the Constituent Assembly had deemed the song written in Sanskrit by Bankimchandra Chatterjee a national song.

Some reports also held up what the india.gov.in portal states – that Vande Mataram “has an equal status with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana”, composed by another well-known Bengali, Rabindranath Tagore.

However, the Constitution mentions only the national anthem and not Vande Mataram.

Only the first two of the six stanzas of Vande Mataram were adopted as the national song as it had courted controversy for having overtly Hindu religious connotations in the later stanzas that wouldn't be acceptable to non-Hindu citizens of the country.

Asked whether all stanzas of the song would be celebrated, the minister asked reporters to “understand the spirit” and “count the stanzas later”.

As part of the Modi government's pet endeavour, celebrations around Vande Mataram would be witnessed in BJP-ruled Assam too. However, as an Assamese and a record-keeper of contemporary Assam history, this development struck me as very significant, as an important aspect of the state's history is linked to the rising popularity of Vande Mataram back in the British-era Bengal.

At the dawn of the 20th century, it was Vande Mataram that had solely kicked up a counter-movement for a patriotic song among the linguistically conscious Assamese, eventually leading to the birth of what is today the north-eastern state’s jatio sangeet or state anthem.

Meaning ‘I bow to thee, mother’ in Sanskrit, Vande Mataram evoked in the Assamese the urge to have their own song for their motherland, Axomi aai.

The state's anthem – ‘O Mur Apunar Dex’ (‘O my beloved motherland’) – was penned by the father of Assamese literature, Laksminath Bezbaroa, around 1909 to satiate that rising demand from the community. The song has since been sung by generations of Assamese, including school children as a morning prayer, and a pledge to celebrate and sacrifice for Axomi aai.

Back in the 1980s, in my school days, the morning prayers would begin with that state anthem and end with the first paragraph of the national anthem.

Vande Mataram and the struggle for Assamese identity

First published in Chatterji's Bengali novel Anandamath in 1882, Vande Mataram (Chatterji had called it Bande Mataram as it was originally written in the Bengali script), was a six stanza-long devotional song woven into the novel to suit its plot – the story of a rich landlord affected by the 1770 famine of Bengal and which was situated against the backdrop of the Sanyasi Rebellion that had risen against the East India Company.

The song, however, entered the nationalist space in Greater Bengal with ferocity only after the division of Bengal in 1905. Lord Curzon's divisive methods then had a devastating effect on not just in Bengal but also in neighbouring Assam.

A large swathe of East Bengal was sliced off to be appended to Assam without the consent of the locals on either side; Sylhet continued to be part of the state till independence, thereby also festering a communal and linguistic faultline, the ill effects of which can be sensed on the ground even today.

But the times then were also interesting, linguistically speaking.

When in the 1830s, the British introduced Bengali as a vernacular court language in Greater Bengal – a position until then held by Persian – it had injected a new confidence into the community; a sense of pride was gained through the recognition of their language, which eventually became the primary push behind the Bengal Renaissance.

Chatterji was a product of that literary and cultural revival movement. Another luminary of that movement, Tagore, had famously recited Vande Mataram at the annual convention of the Indian National Congress in 1896.

In 1874, the Assamese community could also sense a similar new confidence about their language as in that year, Assamese was replaced by Bengali as a court language and a medium of education in Assam. Between 1836 and 1873, for 37 years, the community had to suffer the linguistic hegemony of Bengali, which crafted an Assamese nationalism hinged on language.

That in 1874 the community could officially break out of that hegemony imposed on them by the East India Company and continued by the British government post-1857 injected into the Calcutta-educated and Calcutta-returned Assamese enough zeal and verve to kickstart a parallel movement to promote their own language by rejecting Bengali.

That feeling, and a nationalistic expression towards Axomi aai, were all-encompassing then, transcending into various pockets of culture, including as a rejection of Bengali music for Assamese songs. The roots of Assamese sub-nationalism with language as its bedrock lies there.

The division of Bengal in 1905, however, had added a fresh tension to that matrix, as Bengali-majority Sylhet was added to Assam by Curzon's decision. Most government posts in Assam, even after the Assamese language was given official status, continued to be occupied by Bengalis anyway, adding to local anxiety and unease.

No wonder then the rising popularity of Vande Mataram in Bengal post-1905 as a patriotic song and a tribute to its motherland was resisted tooth and nail in Assam.

Assamese writer Debabrat Sarma, in his informative book Axomiya Jaati Gathan Prokriya Aaru Jatiyo Janagosthigoto Anusthanxamuh (1873-1960), had underlined that although Vande Mataram had found its way into Assam – mainly through its resident Bengalis – and was picking up some amount of popularity, the Assamese middle-class, their leaders and intellectuals were not quite keen about it.

“They did not want just a national song, but a song for the jati [community] too,” he wrote.

“Therefore, Laksminath Bezbaroa responded to that popular wish to express their emotional love towards their mother tongue and the motherland by writing an appropriate song. Though the song neither mentioned the independence movement nor the desire for independence, it was worded in such a manner that it still became the Assamese jatio sangeet,” Sarma had underscored in his book.

Noted Assamese academic-journalist Bijanlal Choudhury's book Junakor Aluron had also underlined Bezbaroa's opposition to Vande Mataram. Interestingly, he had highlighted that Bezbaroa had seen Chatterji's song only as “a Bengali song”.

“Therefore, he wrote O Mur Apunar Dex,” argued Choudhury.

The salience of Bezbaroa's song in the Assamese community only grew after that. In 1928, the Asom Satra Sanmilan, the largest student body formed in 1916 that had fought for the promotion of Assamese language, literature and culture, adopted O Mur Apunar Dex as the community's patriotic anthem at its conference held in Tezpur. Noted composer Kamala Prasad Aggarwala set it to tune, and it began to be sung at all public events.

Sentiments around the state anthem

Sarma had underlined the deep Assamese sentiments attached to the state anthem by pointing to a debate that had erupted in Assamese newspapers and magazines as late as the 1990s just because a word in Bezbaroa's lyrics was equated to a word in Vande Mataram by a writer-columnist:

“The controversy was due to Phanindra Kumar Debchoudhury's contention that Bezbaroa was influenced by Bankimchandra and therefore, borrowed the word ‘sufala’ from Vande Mataram to express the love for his mother tongue by using the word ’sujala’. It was opposed by most people. They countered that the word used was not ‘sujala’ but ‘suwala’ (xuwola).”

The issue was discussed around 1997 in Assamese newspapers and periodicals like the Asam Bani, Prantik, Ajir Asom and Dainik Asam.

Even in 2025, sensing this abiding love and respect for the state anthem among the people of Assam, the Himanta Biswa Sarma government, in Jhumur Binandini – its outreach towards the state's Adivasi/tea garden community – held in Guwahati earlier this year, had also showcased it as a unifier of people by gathering thousands to sing O Mur Apunar Dex in unison, and not Vande Mataram, though it is no secret that the ruling party's sentiments are with the latter.

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