Will any of your learned readers satisfy me on our national anthem written by Rabindra Nath Tagore? It is a fact on record by Tagore himself that he was approached by a high govt. official to compose a befitting paean in honour of George-V on the occasion of his visit to India on Dec. 12, 1911 to commemorate his coronation as Emperor of India.
The net outcome was Jana-Gana-Mana which was widely criticised in Bengal for its obvious pro- imperial strain in profusion, in the background of the poet’s refusal to oblige Bipen Chandra Pal when the latter approached him to compose a song comprehending the country and goddess Durga in the same canvass. The composition reflected
the composer’s own soul and with it the soul of the country. The poet was sore, his reaction was sour, he was mortified to see that his countrymen could come so low to dismantle him with shower of insinuations. I have written to English and
language dailies that the unmentioned official was Asutosh Chowdhury, a close relative of Tagore. None was published. Why Tagore did not specifically name the official? Was he over- balanced by a sense of delicacy to fall in silence?
However, Prabodh Chandra Sen, ex Vice- Chancellor of Visva Bharati, in his monograph on national anthem said that the Jana Gana Mana was not sung at all in the Delhi Durbar. In its place a Hindi song was sung. My questions are:
1) If the revelation of Sen is true (a) which Hindi song and by whom Jana Gana Mana was replaced? (b) Who had sung the composition? (c) Why was Tagore’s song withdrawn? (d) Where has the Hindi song gone? (e) Why was it hushed up? and (2) what does the imperial record say about it?
