At fifty, Tagore wrote “Jana Gana Mana Adhinaayak Jaya Hey”. This song became the national anthem of independent India. There was and is, still, a huge controversy over the genesis of this song.
It is to be noted that Tagore wrote this song on the eve of 27th congress of the INC as the national leaders requested him to write them a befitting song. The INC sang this song at the meet.
Sixteen years after this meet, on 28th October, 1936, the Congress Working Committee accepted this song as the national anthem.
Then started a controversy that refuses to die down till date.
In 1911, 12th December, King George the fifth came to Delhi to announce the revocation of Bengal’s partition and switched the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Then on the eve of Christmas, he came to Calcutta.
His coming to Calcutta was co-incidentally close to INC’s meet. Someone sent across the word that Tagore wrote this song to eulogise the king.
The whole issue had everything to do with a national English daily that had taken upon itself the duty of mocking at Tagore and thus degrading him before public eye through disinformation campaign as it could not stomach the insult Tagore inflicted on the British administration by returning the knighthood title after the Zalianwalabagh massacre.
In 1939, the dumbstruck poet wrote a letter to Shreemoti Sudhamoyee Devi. There he wrote that how “George the fourth” or” George the fifth” could become the “Builder of India’s Destiny” and how he could hail “Victory to Thee” (George the fifth)! Then he went on to say that it was beneath his dignity to respond to the misgivings shown by these insanely stupid people.
The controversy should have ended there. But unfortunately it is still raging at the behest of some illiterate people posing as “intellectuals” in the society.
On the august occasion of celebrating seventy-fifth year of India’s Independence Day, it is time to bury the ill-informed controversy for good to pay respect both to the poet and the motherland.