The article argues that Bangladesh’s current
national anthem is not representative of the general opinion; it
especially fails to capture the spirit of the freedom struggle which
was won with great sacrifices. A national anthem should also reflect
the nation’s religio-cultural ethos. The national anthems of India,
Canada, France, the USA and the UK, for example, are some of
those which reflect these countries’ national ethos, are directly
associated with the key turning events in their history and,
therefore, are widely acceptable. As Australia had a national
debate, even plebiscite, before adopting its national anthem and
Spain had once a competition to write a new national anthem
(although no winner was declared and the onagain off-again old
one wasretained), Bangladesh, too, may follow the precedent in order
to adopt a new national anthem.)“O mankind! We have…made you into
nations and tribes, that you may know one another.” The Qu’ran,
Surah Al-Hujurat:
13. “Patriotism is part of Faith in Allah
(God).” Traditional Islamic Saying (not Hadith). “Mother and
motherland are more to be proud of than heaven.” The Ramayana by
Valmiki Together with a name and a national flag, a national anthem
is one of the basics by which a nation identifies itself from the
time of its birth. It is among the certain core credentials of
great symbolic and emotional significance by which a nation binds
and unifies itself, crystallizes whatever loose and fluid elements
there may exist in cementing its nationhood and establishes the
concrete image of its national integrity and identity.
Unfortunately, Bangladesh’s national anthem, I believe, is far from
meeting those noble and lofty expectations. In fact, it seems to
miserably fall short of achieving the fundamental goals and
aspirations of national significance. Thirty-five years after the
independence, the people of Bangladesh still do not seem to be very
happy and excited about their national anthem and they seem to
continue to feel a great degree of unease and discomfort about it.
Despite the glory that was Rabindranath Tagore,
the winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in literature, a sane, cool and
thinking Bangladeshi cannot agree that one of his songs (“Amar
Sonar Bangla,” i.e., “My Golden Bengal”) has been chosen as the
national anthem of Bangladesh upon its emergence as an independent
country in 1971. I think there are many Bangladeshis who are deeply
disturbed and dispirited by their current national anthem and who as
such will agree with the following details of the argument against
it. There is no doubt that Tagore is the greatest Bengali writer
ever. But that he occupies the most illustrious seat on the Bengali
Parnassus does not necessarily justify the high status given
to his song “Amar Sonar Bangla” in this independent, sovereign and
Muslim-majority country. Not only one can sincerely question the
wisdom and even the political correctness of such a choice but
also doubt that any work by Tagore can ever be made Bangladesh’s
national anthem.
Like dozens of other songs and poems written
contemporaneously as well as in the past by others, this Tagore
piece undoubtedly delighted and inspired us during our liberation
struggle. It did so, in my view, by virtue of its romantic lyricism
and romantic love for Bengali soil and seasonal beauty. However, it
is not a classic of artistic and thema
tic significance and does not
rise to the level of lofty dignity and sublime gravity expected of a
national anthem. There is no unique distinctiveness about its
literary merit. Moreover, being remote in its origin from the dream
and birth of Bangladesh as an independent nation, the connection of
the song with the time and circumstance of Bangladesh’s liberation
struggle is too thin for it to deserve such a supreme attention and
status. Therefore, despite the fact that the song does occupy
a place, as do many other songs and poems composed during and before
the liberation struggle, in the hearts and minds of the people of
Bangladesh, an objective and dispassionate mind cannot be convinced
that it deserves the prestige of being singled out as the national
anthem of the country. Let me try to explain a few things in some
more detail:
1. The song is by no means an extraordinarily
great one, whether aesthetically or spiritually. By no account,
whether style or content, it is unique or distinguished. There is no
underlying depth of meaning nor is it written in an exalted public
voice, as is the case with many other national anthems around the
world. Like many other Tagore poems, it is just a simple reflective
nature poem in a conventional style of langurous inward bent.Even
the opening verse (“My Golden Bengal”) is a cliche, infected with
euphemism. The whole poem/song is an exercise in
decadentemotionalism. As a fellow Bangladeshi friend of mine
currently teaching at an Australian University rightly put it,
“Instead of instilling a patriotic passion, the song lulls one to a
spontaneous doze. It lacks the rhythm and the cadence that are
normally associated with national anthems, whose lyrics, tune
and beat stimulate one’s sense of nationalism and patriotism.”
2. The song fails to faithfully represent
the landscape of today’s Bangladesh, of which images such as
mango groves and banyan trees are hardly characteristic. Unlike the
“Shapla” (water-lily), rightly chosen national flower of
Bangladesh, mango groves and banyan trees do not grow in plenty and
are rarely a common sight because they are not widely or uniformly
found all over the country. A few scattered mango groves may be seen
only in the north-western part of Bangladesh, extending into India,
where the poet’s family estate was once headquartered for a time in Shelidah, Kushtia. He composed the song in the post-partition Bengal
(1905) when the Padma used to be in the beauty of her full tide. It
is the then somewhat picturesque landscape of that regi
on that finds
expression in the poem. Unfortunately, with the geographical and
geological changes over the passage of time, made controversial and
complicated by the selfish political agenda of the neighboring
countries, the glory of the landscape has been in steady decline to
the extent that the full-flowing Padma is not there any more. Since
there is in the song no true reflection of the broad spectrum of the
natural beauty of Bangladesh and since it does not smack of her
painful emergence, it cannot be said to have a representative
quality about it. As a result the nation as a whole cannot really
identify with the material particularities of the poem.
To put it metaphorically, we must not lose the forest for trees. A
national anthem ought to be characterized by a generalizing and
universalizing principle suggesting not simply the idea of a free
country with a mass of land born with its specific borders but a
broad outline of her cherished ideals and farsighted visions. A
quick glance at the lyrics of the national anthems of Canada,
Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, India or Pakistan,
for example, is sufficient to understand what I mean by noble
and high-spirited generalizations found in a national anthem.
3. Tagore wrote “Amar Sonar Bangla” for the cause
of undivided Bengal led by Hindu Zemindars (big land owners) and
their clearly communal Swadeshi Movement against the 1905 Partition
of Bengal. While Muslims in general, elites and masses alike of East
Bengal, supported the Partition, Tagore and the fellow Hindu
leaders opposed it for fear of losing influence, labor and
landed estates in East Bengal. Our countrymen sacrificed their lives
for Bangladesh and its soil, not a bit of the Indian. “Amar Sonar
Bangla” is therefore far from suggesting even a remote hint with
regard to the political and geographical independence of the country
which came into being as Bangladesh. Having nothing to do with the
dynamics of a national struggle and its costly build-up over a long
period of time, the song fails to evoke a sense of political and
cultural history of the geographical area of its own borders called
Bangladesh.
4. A comparison of “Amar Sonar Bangla” with
Tagore’s “Jana-Gana- Mana-Adhinayaka Jaya Hey” and Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee’s “Bande Mataram!,” which are India’s national anthem and
national song respectively and which were directly connected with
the contemporary politics of Indian nationalism clearly reveals
“Amar Sonar Bangla”-’s inferiority in terms of gravity and dignity,
style and diction as well as its having been against the dream and
emergence of Bangladesh. “Amar Sonar Bangla” falls short not only on
the matter of direct connectedness with the most important national
event, that is, the independence of Bangladesh but also in the power
to generate deeper philosophical reflection and forward-looking
political dynamism.
5. Bankim’s “Bande Mataram!” meaning “Hail the
Mother” or “Hail to the Motherland” was written in 1876. These
were the opening words of a song in his last novel Anandamath (“The
Monastery of Joy”). Adopted as the national song at the Varanasi
session of the All India Congress Committee on September 7, 1905,
the song was used to push for the nationalist agenda during the
Hindu-dominated Swadeshi Movement in the wake of the 1905 partition
of Bengal.
6. Although Tagore spent some time in what was
then East Bengal (and afterwards East Pakistan, now
Bangladesh) to take care of his paternal landed property, he was not
born in Bangladesh. His birthplace is Calcutta, West Bengal, which
has all along been a part of India. So, by birth, nationality and
political identity, he was, still is, and will continue to be an
Indian, not a Bangladeshi. Choice of a national anthem must not
depend on the neighborly help of a country during a critical moment.
It must not be dictated by the need for the immediate
appeasement of
a neighbor in consequence of that neighbor’s help in times of
crisis. The need for reward for a neighbor may be met by
various other political means.
7. In religion Tagore was not one of the majority
of the population of Bangladesh,which is overwhelmingly muslim.
While it may sound somewhat racial, communal and sectarian, the fact
of the matter is that we cannot ignore the larger reality of
the religious sentiment of the overwhelming majority. The
Indians did not make a work by a member of their minority Muslims,
Sikhs or Christians their national anthem. They did not care to be
politically correct (to use that overused and unappealing cliché)
and they did not commit the folly of being politically correct. They
were right not to have done so. Political correctness is a
euphemism for the cheap, easy and shortcut meant to accommodate the
folly of the weak. We do not have any quarrel with the choice of the
wise Indians. Tagore the poet is certainly not at issue here; the
creative artist in him is above the barrier of national borders.
However, it is entirely different to use him in the politically and
nationalistically sensitive context in which the majority of the
people, their religion,their history and the very historic occasion
of their independence are indeed the most important determining
factors. National capitals move and change, national flags
change and so do national anthems. So why should Bangladesh continue
to keep the matter divisive and unresolved and not move forward in
quest of a widely acceptable and thereby pretty permanent solution
in the interest of our dear mother land, our Patrie (meaning
“fatherland” / “pitribhumi”),our Vaterland (also meaning
“fatherland”) and our Heimat (meaning one’s own country / “Apon Desh”)
as the French and the Germans are proud to call their homeland.
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