“Why were we singing only half of the national anthem?”, asked my 8 year old neighbor whom I had forced to watch the parades and PM’s address that morning on DoorDarshan.
Does that mean we have been singing only half of our national anthem for over last 6 decades???!!! Does that mean those generations that had amongst them, people who fought for our freedom and won and celebrated, did so only with half of our national anthem??? Does that mean WE- the so called shinning nation of the 21st Century- amongst other things did not even get our National Anthem right? NO!, Of course not!
What we have been singing and know as our national anthem is indeed our ‘full’ national anthem adopted officially by the Constituent Assembly on the 24th Of January, 1950. However it happens to be the first of five stanzas from a Brahmo poem that Ravindranath Tagore wrote in 1919. Thus although the original poem contains five stanzas, our national anthem is full and complete with the first stanza which we have been proudly and judiciously singing all these years from 27th December’1911 when it was first sung in the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress.
However on the strategic eve of the Independence Day an album has been released called Jaya Hey which has the "full poem" by Tagore.
If only our freedom would have imbibed responsibility in us our media know the difference between a "poem" and a "national anthem".
