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Today, we are flooded with information (and misinformation) about Vande Mataram, India’s national song, a song that has been valorised and weaponised, a song around which the government felt it was imperative to conduct a ten-hour discussion in Parliament last week. But there is utter silence regarding the core message of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath in which the song Vande Mataram is embedded.

Vande Mataram was written in 1875 and published in Bangadarshan, a Bengali literary magazine started by Chattopadhyay and later revived by Rabindranath Tagore. In 1882 it was inserted in Anandamath.

Anandamath is set in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It deals with the sufferings of the Bengali people during the famine of 1770. The Nawab of Bengal, a puppet ruler under the British East India Company, was obliged to extort heavy land taxes from the peasantry. The Nawab and his officials, rather than the British, became the visible face of oppression.

The novel also draws inspiration from the sanyasi rebellions of the time. The sannyasi and fakir rebellion between 1760s and 1800 was a widespread uprising in Bengal and Bihar against British East India Company rule. It was led by Hindu monks and Muslim fakirs protesting heavy taxes, the plight of famine victims and restrictions on religious practices.

They were...

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