Q1.
Below are the first two stanzas of the song. Can you make out some of their meaning?
Vande mātaram!
sujalām suphalām malayajaśhītalām
śhasyaśhyāmalām, mātaram!
Vande mātaram!
Śubhrajyotsnām pulakitayāminīm
phullakusumita drumadalaśhobhinīm
suhāsinīm sumadhura bhāṣhiṇīm
sukhadām varadām, mātaram!
Vande mātaram!
Answer
Yes — almost every word is a picture of the land, addressed as a mother. The song is in Sanskrit, and it is built out of compound adjectives, all of them describing the same person: mātaram, the Mother.
| Word | Its parts | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| vande mātaram | vande = I bow / I praise; mātaram = to the Mother | “I bow to the Mother” / “Praise to the Mother” |
| sujalām | su = good; jala = water | richly watered — a land of good rivers |
| suphalām | su = good; phala = fruit | richly fruited |
| malayaja-śhītalām | malayaja = sandalwood (from the Malaya hills); śhītala = cool | cooled by the sandal-scented breeze from the south |
| śhasya-śhyāmalām | śhasya = crops; śhyāmala = dark green | dark green with standing crops |
| śubhra-jyotsnām | śubhra = bright, white; jyotsnā = moonlight | bright with white moonlight |
| pulakita-yāminīm | pulakita = thrilled (hair standing on end with delight); yāminī = night | whose nights are thrilled with joy |
| phulla-kusumita drumadala-śhobhinīm | phulla = blossoming; kusumita = in flower; druma = tree; dala = leaf/foliage; śhobhinī = beautiful | lovely with trees in full flower and leaf |
| suhāsinīm | su = sweet; hāsinī = smiling | sweetly smiling |
| sumadhura bhāṣhiṇīm | su-madhura = very sweet; bhāṣhiṇī = speaking | sweet of speech |
| sukhadām varadām | sukha-dā = giver of happiness; vara-dā = giver of boons | giver of happiness, giver of blessings |
Put together: “I bow to the Mother — rich in waters, rich in fruit, cooled by the southern breeze, dark-green with harvests; bright with moonlight, her nights thrilled with delight, beautiful with flowering trees, sweetly smiling, sweetly speaking, giver of joy and of blessings — Mother, I bow to you.”
Why these words became a political slogan: Not one line of the two stanzas mentions politics, an enemy, or even a name. Every image is of soil, water, crops, trees and moonlight — and all of them are said to a mother. That is what made the song so powerful in 1905: it fused the ordinary land you can see from a field with the person you are most bound to defend. Rabindranath Tagore set it to music and sang it at the 1896 Congress session; in 1905 it was sung in street processions until the authorities banned public singing of it; and in 1950 the Constituent Assembly adopted it as India’s National Song.
Did you know? The poem was composed in 1875, seven years before Bankim used it in Anandamath (1882). The title is the Bengali form of the Sanskrit Vande Mātaram — Bengali has no letter ‘va’, only ‘ba’, which is why the newspaper of 1906 was called Bande Mataram.