Metamorphosing from a song written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Vande Mataram became the symbol of protest against the Partition of Bengal in 1905 and soon afterwards caught national imagination as the rallying cry of the freedom struggle, becoming a fixture at Congress sessions before Independence.

On Monday, Parliament will discuss Vande Mataram for 10 hours on the occasion of its 150th anniversary, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to initiate the debate on the government’s behalf. The song, which was partly written in Sanskrit and partly in Bengali, was composed in 1875 and included in Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath in 1881 during its serialisation in the magazine Bangadarshan. During the 1896 Congress session in Calcutta, Rabindranath Tagore set it to tune and sang it for t

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