MAHA MARKS 150 YRS OF VANDE MATARAM

State announces year-long 4-phase celebration to honour Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's timeless national song.

- Ravikiran Deshmukh

The Maharashtra government has announced an elaborate yearlong programme to mark 150 years of the national song Vande Mataram, penned by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1875. The celebration, which will unfold in four phases across the state, begins on November 7 — the day the song completes a century and a half.

The song, which became a rallying cry during India's freedom struggle, was first sung publicly by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore at the 1896 Indian National Congress session held in Kolkata, then Calcutta. During the pre-Independence years, its first two stanzas were routinely sung at every Congress session.