OFFTRACK: PUNE, MAHARASHTRA

Mother Inspiration

An arts teacher is obsessed with recordings of Vande Mataram

By Kanchan Sushil Maselekar

In his small living room on Bajirao Road in Pune, Milind Sabnis sits surrounded by audio cassettes. He is obviously a music lover and those who know him confirm that he is obsessed with the tapes. But there's a difference. Unlike most who plump for a certain type of music, perhaps Hindustani or classical or pop, perhaps a combination of rock and jazz, Sabnis is stuck, like a faulty gramophone, on one song.

Play any of the cassettes around him-there are 55 in all-and they will all reverberate with the same words: Vande Mataram. Right from the deep tones of Rabindranath Tagore at the Beadon Square convention of the Indian National Congress way back in 1896 to A.R. Rahman's signature tune, Sabnis has them all. Rummage in the pile and you will find the finest names in Indian music: Vishnupant Phadnis, Keshvarao Bhole, Geeta Dutt, Hemant Kumar, Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Jasraj and Lata Mangeshkar. There are film versions of the song too: the Anandamath adaptation that employs a mixture of the ragas Malkauns and Bhairavi as well as the Usha Uthup strain set by Vanraj Bhatia in Shyam Benegal's Making of the Mahatma. "There are so many variations in this song that it really got me interested," explains Sabnis. "Musicians have all along been recomposing it and experiments abound in West Bengal and Maharashtra."

He isn't exaggerating. Few songs have drawn as many singers as Vande Mataram has ever since Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote the verses in 1875 as part of his novel Anandamath. Popular right from the start, Hemendra Bose Records and the Nicole Record Company had brought out albums in the voices of Tagore, Surendranath Banerjee, Satyabhusan Gupta, R.N. Bose and many others. Most of these records were destroyed in a fire at the Bose factory, but copies exist in Sabnis' collection.

For the arts teacher at Dnynada Prashala in Pune, the national song is more than just a piece of music, however variegated. It was a realisation that dawned on him as late as 1994, the death centenary of Bankim Chandra. Sabnis was to speak to his students to mark the occasion. It was while he was doing his homework for the lecture that it occurred to him Vande Mataram was a study in itself.

Not surprising then that Sabnis' collection has, besides the cassettes and records, rare documentation and papers on Vande Mataram. Like a true researcher, he even visited the home of Bankim Chandra at Kanthalpada in Naihati, West Bengal, and got in touch with hundreds of people who owned records of the song. Drawing from the rich repertoire of performances and making his own conclusions, Sabnis brought out a book called Vande Mataram-Ek Shodh.

The book makes for a revealing read. In fact talking to Sabnis can itself prove to be a learning experience for he has rare nuggets of information and recollections. For instance, he will remind you that in the pre-Independence era, it was Vishnu Digambar Paluskar who sang the national song in raga Kafi for the conventions of the Indian National Congress. And that it was on the suggestion of Subhas Chandra Bose that Timir Baran set its tune in raga Durga to fit into the beat of a march. This gramophone record, Sabnis adds, was used for the parades of the Azad Hind Fauz and was frequently broadcast over radio from Singapore.

Whether it was in those heady days of the freedom struggle or in the cacophony of current-day politics, Vande Mataram has always been at the centre of a national debate. A section of the political leadership believes that it is a song befitting the status of a national anthem. Even recently, the Uttar Pradesh Government's decision to make the singing of Vande Mataram-along with the Saraswati Vandana-compulsory in all schools had sparked off a controversy.

According to Sabnis, it is this perennial obsession with making the song the national anthem that has resulted in the diverse ways in which it has been sung and conceptualised. And though this song has five verses, it is only the first that is sung-just as it is with the Jana Gana Mana. But Sabnis, it appears, is not getting enough of even that.