Under the delightfully readable and simple narrative, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya analyses the attitudes of the Muslim League, a section of the Congress Party, and of the British administration, and the issues involved. He looks at the twists and turns of communal politics in India through the prism of a song which began its career as an anti-imperialist slogan but became a communal war cry and ended up as a national song. But it never achieved the status of the national anthem, despite the fervent pleading of many political leaders.
Beginning from the recent controversies centering around Vande Mataram, he goes back to the very first stage when Bankim Chandra wrote the poem—"a purposeless creation of a poet musing and singing to himself... having no deliberate strategy in the choice of language and diction". Although one may not agree with the author’s view that Vande Mataram was written purely for art’s sake, there’s no doubt that the work is one of erudition. Yet, Bhattacharya carries his scholarship lightly, rendering this an excellent example of history in reverse gear.
