150 Years of Vande Mataram: Key facts every Indian should know about the song

November 7, 2025, marks the 150th anniversary of the Indian National Song Vande Mataram. Composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the song first appeared on Bangadarshan on November 7, 1875. He later incorporated it in his immortal novel, 'Anandamath' in 1882 and was first sung by Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore in the 1896 Indian National Congress session. It was adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the National song in 1950. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the year-long celebration of the national song at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.

Key facts about Vande Mataram

1. Meaning of Vande Mataram- Vande Mataram is originally written in Sanskrit and has been adopted in many languages. The term Vande Mataram translates to “Mother, I Bow to Thee”. The song personifies India as a mother figure and praises its beauty and spirit in great detail.
2. Indian National song is not the complete Vande Mataram: The song Vande Mataram was sung in the novel, 'Anandamath', which is about ascetic rebels who find a couple separated during the Bengal famine and try to reconnect them. The rebels were staging a revolution against the British East India Company. The Novel imagines an alternate universe where unskilled rebels manage to defeat the East India Company's armed troops. The ascetic rebels idolised the motherland as a goddess who had been plundered and would regain her true form through revolution. The Indian National Song uses the first two stanzas of the Vande Mataram. The original Vande Mataram has six stanzas. The later stanzas invoke explicit imagery of various deties, so the two stanzas were used to make it more inclusive.
3. Awakened Indian conscience: The song Vande Mataram awakened Indian nationalism; it became a slogan, a battle cry for the independence movement. It was first used as a slogan in 1905 during the movement against the Bengal Partition. The melody became a movement. The British banned the song and the novel to reduce its impact.
4. Absolute unanimity: In the constituent assembly, there was absolute unanimity for adopting the Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana as the national song and the national anthem.
5. There is no fixed rule: Unlike the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, there is no requirement to stand up or not to move or maintain decorum for reciting or singing Vande Mataram.

150 Years of Vande Mataram

Vande Mataram is imbued in Indian consciousness. From the plains of Bengal to Bombay and Punjab, everywhere in India, the song was emblematic of the collective aspiration for freedom and self-governance. The song manages to materialise the abstract idea of patriotism and nationalism. During the colonial period, it was a symbol of resistance, and today, after 150 years, it is a collective identity, a collective aspiration, and a collective effervescence.