On 27 December 1911, as the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Calcutta came to a conclusion, Rabindranath Tagore's niece Sarala Devi Chowdhurani, accompanied by a group of young students, took the stage at Bharat Sabha in Bow Bazar and performed the first stanza of a new poem by Tagore. Originally written as a prayer hymn for the monotheistic Hindu reformist organization Brahmo Samaj, the poem was set to a tune based on the Hindustani classical raga 'Alhaiya Bilawal' by Tagore himself, and exhorted a higher being — Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata, or 'the dispenser of India's destiny' — to guide the nation through the darkness of colonialism. It was later published in its entirety in the Bengali periodical 'Tatwabodhini Patrika' the following year.
From The Morning Song Of India To The National Anthem
Over the next several decades, the poem made a profound impact and became a popular anthem of the Indian freedom movement. In 1919, the Irish poet and teacher James H. Cousins adopted Tagore's own English translation of the poem, titled 'The Morning Song of India', as the prayer song of the Besant Theosophical College, where Cousins served as the principal at the time. It was also chosen as the inaugural school song of the Doon School, when the institution was established in 1935.
In 1943, Subhash Chandra Bose adopted 'Subh Sukh Chain' (Auspicious Happiness) — a slightly-altered Hindi translation of the poem by Bose himself, Mumtaz Hussain, a writer for the Azad Hind Radio, and Colonel Abid Hasan Safrani of the Indian National Army (INA), as the anthem for Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, the provincial government of India in exile. Captain Ram Singh Thakuri of the INA gave the song a martial tune, and it was broadcast from the INA station at the Cathay Building in Singapore.
During the independence movement, 'Vande Mataram', a nationalist anthem written by Bengali author Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, was frequently sung at protests and political meetings, including the proclamation of the Provisional Government of Free India in Singapore in October 1943. Some Indian Muslim and Shikh activists and freedom fighters, however, were not comfortable with the expressly idolatrous and Hindu metaphors used in Vande Mataram (Hail, Motherland!), which imagined India as a personified mother goddess of the people.
Tagore's Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata, with its more spiritual, inclusive, and pluralistic imagination of India, became a unifying alternative to Vande Mataram, and it was officially adopted by India's Constituent Assembly as the country's national anthem on January 24, 1950.
Who Is 'Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata'? The Controversy About The 'Dispenser Of India's Destiny'
Since Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata was first sung in the annual assembly of the INC in Calcutta in December 1911, there has been controversy about the identity of the eponymous Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata in the song. Who is this 'dispenser of India's destiny'? Who is this perennial guide Tagore exhorts to drive India out of its wretchedness and misery?
Almost immediately after the song was first performed, Hindu nationalists decried it as an ode to King George V, who presided over the Delhi Durbar in 1911, because of the mention of 'Rajeshwar' (The King of Kings) in the penultimate line of the poem, "Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey, Jaya Rajeshwar, Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata" — Glory, Glory, Glory to the King of Kings! the dispenser of India's destiny!. At the same time, Muslim nationalists objected against the song's reference to an eternal charioteer, "Hey Chiro-Sarathi, Tawbow Rotho Chakrey, Mukhorito Potho Dinaratri" — O, eternal charioteer, the roads are echoing with the sound of your arrival all day and night — which they considered as an allusion to the Hindu deity Krishna, the charioteer and guide of Arjuna in the Mahabharata.
Tagore rejected both interpretations. In a letter to political activist and writer Pulin Behari Sen, dated 10 November 1937, Tagore wrote: "In the song Jana Gana Mana I have praised the god Bharoto Bhagya Bidhata who is the constant charioteer of travellers through the ages, he who guides through all the difficult circumstances, he who is born in many ages. He can never be King George V or VI or any other George."
In another letter, dated 19 March 1939, Tagore again rejected the notion that the poem was written for King George V: "I should only insult myself if I cared to answer those who consider me capable of such unbounded stupidity as to sing in praise of George IV or George V as the Eternal Charioteer leading the pilgrims on their journey through countless ages of the timeless history of mankind."
Who, then, is the eternal charioteer, the guide of India's destiny, that Tagore calls 'Bharoto Bhagya Bidhata' and 'Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka' — the leader of the Indian peoples' hearts and minds?
An astute political observer and commentator, Tagore was deeply involved with the freedom struggle and often wrote about his ideas of the kind of nation an independent India should aspire to be. In 'Gora', one of Tagore's most political novels, published in 1910 — the year before he wrote Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata — we see the first explicit mention of Tagore's idea of such a supreme being. Near the end of the novel, Gora, the protagonist, describes him as: "God, who is the god of all — be they Hindu, Musalman, Christian, Brahmo, and whatever else — whose temple doors do not shut out any race, any caste, any individual, who is not just the God of the Hindus, but the God of Bharatbarsha!"
A More Perfect Union — India's Inclusive Secularism & Tagore's Idea Of India
Universalism was central to Tagore's political thought. Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata, or the complete Jana Gana Mana, is an ode to that universal, inclusive great unifier of all — the guide of India's manifest, multicultural, multilinguistic, and multi-ethnic destiny. Each verse, each stanza, every single line of the song is a testament to Tagore's inclusive idea of India. From the inclusion of Hindus, Buddhists, Shikhs, Jains, Parsees, Muslims, and Christians in the second stanza, to the image of the country, not as a goddess, but as a loving mother protecting her children through nightmares and terrors ("Duswopne, Atonke, Rokkha Korile Onke, Snehomoyee Tumi Mata"), Tagore painted the very outlines of India's tolerant, more inclusive secularism.
Unlike French secularism, known as 'laïcité', a principle of strict separation of church and state, which emphasises the neutrality of the public sphere, Indian secularism, enshrined in the constitution, has always signified the state's equal regard for all religions — ensuring religious freedom and preventing domination of one religion over another. As we usher in another Independence Day and celebrate India's hard-earned freedom, we must look back at the fraught history of how we arrived here. In the same way that Tagore imagined in 1911, we must also imagine a more perfect union of India that connects us despite all our contradictions and differences. Although we may have strayed from this ideal in recent years, the national anthem, and its unsung verses are testament to that very ethos of inclusivity and intersectionality — a guiding light for Indians of all faiths, castes, and creeds.
Listen to Bharoto Bhagya Bidhata — a rendition of the unsung verses of the national anthem — here:
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