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Jana Gana Mana is adopted officially as the National Anthem of India, today in 1950.
Adopted on 24th Jan 1950
24th January, 1950 - India had been independent for quite some time by then. The new nation needed symbols to rely upon - symbols to unite and remind citizens of the common legacy they shared, and the common future they intended to build together. India needed a formalised anthem.
Luckily, there was one already present - the Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata by Tagore, sung in the 1911 session of the Congress, served as an excellent template, and one portion of it was taken as the official national anthem.
The song was written in the sadhu bhasha - a form of Bengali which is highly Sanskritised.
The national anthem, as it stands today, is sung in the Gaud Sarang raga, and is to be sung in 52 seconds of play time. The anthem today is a symbol of the unity of more than a billion Indians - and it has historical significance, being adopted as the singing rhyme by Subhas Chandra Bose in 1942 in Germany, as well as several Indian institutions and films too.
The anthem gives a geographic description of the political regions, rivers, mountains, and other features of the subcontinent, and grants praise and victory to the dispenser of India’s destiny.
On the 24th of January, 1950, the anthem was formally made the national anthem of India. There have been some controversies about the anthem - the main one being about all the regions not getting representation in the anthem itself - since it only mentions the British-annexed regions and not the now-included Princely states. Furthermore, it is a matter of historical debate whether it was written for the Congress session or in the name of the English monarch at that time.
Despite all the debates, the anthem has stood, and stands in the foreseeable future, as the ultimate external expression of the Indian nationality.
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