Republic Day 2023: It is that time of the year when you will be able to hear India’s national anthem, Jana Gama Mana, at various places during the Republic Day celebrations. Republic Day is an important event for the country as it marks the adoption of the Constitution of India on January 26, 1950, and the country’s transformation into a republic. Every year, a spectacular military and cultural pageant is held in New Delhi. It takes months of preparation to put on a great show. As India gears up to mark the 74th Republic Day, you too must gear up for this momentous occasion. You can start by knowing about our national anthem Jana Gana Mana.
1. Who wrote the national anthem? National Anthem – ‘Jana Gana Mana’ was originally composed in Bengali language as Bharato Bhagya Bidhata called ‘Sadhu Bhasa’. It was written by India’s first Nobel laureate (2013) Rabindranath Tagore on December 11, 1911.
2. The national anthem was first sung on December 27, 1911, at the Calcutta (now Kolkata) session of the Indian National Congress. It was performed for the first time in Hamburg on September 11, 1942.
3. The formal singing of the national anthem takes 52 seconds.
4. The underlying message of ‘Jana Gana Mana’ is pluralism. It was adopted as the national anthem of India by the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950.
5. The national anthem is loosely based on the classical raga ‘Alhiya Bilawal’, but not completely. It is the most commonly performed raga of a large group of ragas that are primarily based on a scale more or less similar to the Western major scale.
6. As a semi-Sanskrit text, it is adapted into many modern Indian languages. However, the pronunciation of words varies greatly across countries. This is primarily because most Indian languages are abugidas – a type of writing system in which basic characters denote consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels.
7. The musical notation for the English translation of the national anthem was set by Margaret, wife of the poet James H. Cousins, who was the principal of the Besant Theosophical College.
8. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose ordered free translation of the National Anthem from Sanskritized Bengali to Urdu-Hindi. The translation was written by Capt. Abid Ali, which was penned by Capt. Ram Singh Thakur and was called ‘Subah Sukh Chain’.
9. The song, which consists of five verses, consists almost entirely of nouns that can also function as verbs. Most of the nouns in the song are in use in all major languages across the country.
10. The national anthem remains more or less unchanged in different languages.