27 December: Memory, Meaning, Music of Truth, and a Birthday Gift

 

27 December has, over the years, acquired a layered meaning in my life—personal, historical and intellectual, perhaps. It is personal for it happens to be my wife’s birthday. It is also a date that repeatedly invites reflection: on loss and healing, on science and nationhood, and on how history is sometimes misunderstood, sometimes misrepresented, yet always worth defending with evidence.

Last year, unfortunately, grief eclipsed memory. The sudden and untimely passing (on 26 December, 2024) of our Sainik School Bijapur classmate of over five decades, a Mumbaikar, Pradip Talikoti, —our beloved Paddya—left us, more particularly Milind and I, his Mumbai friends, shocked and stunned. The shock of losing a friend with whom Milind and I used to meet very frequently in Mumbai and the last of our meeting and conversations had happened just three days before his passing. In that emotional fog, last year, I had forgotten my wife’s birthday. Yet, it was she who gently steered me back—reminding me, with characteristic grace, that writing has always been my way of negotiating sorrow. It was through her quiet understanding that my grief of losing a friend was transformed into scientific reflection.

Two days later (29 December, 2024) I wrote—about Charles Darwin setting sail aboard HMS Beagle on 27 December 1831, an event that altered humanity’s understanding of life itself.  Here is a link to my the subject post https://khened.blogspot.com/2024/12/forgetting-wifes-birthday-27-december.html

A year before – 27 December 2023, I had chosen another historical moment to mark her birthday—the first public rendition of Jana Gana Mana on 27 December 1911 at the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta. Here is the link the subject blog https://khened.blogspot.com/2023/12/27-december-jana-gana-mana-national.html

Each year, unknowingly perhaps, this date has allowed me to place personal emotion within a wider historical canvas.

This year, as my wife marks her birthday today, I wish to do something slightly different: to briefly recall those earlier reflections, but to primarily address a historical falsehood that continues to circulate about Jana Gana Mana. This clarification, rooted in documentary evidence and scholarly consensus, is my birthday gift to my wife this year: an offering devoid of any material gifts, but of truth, memory, and intellectual honesty.

The Persistent Myth: Was Jana Gana Mana Written in Praise King George V?

The claim that Rabindranath Tagore composed Jana Gana Mana to welcome King George V during his 1911 visit to India is historically incorrect. Yet, more than a century later, it continues to surface—sometimes through ignorance, sometimes through ideological mischief – on the social media and this year it was perhaps more prominent in wake of the Parliamentary debate on the National Song, Vande Mataram, an equally important national identity, which marked its sesquicentennial year this year.

It is significant to recall what actually happened on 27 December 1911 during the Indian National Congress Session in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to address the myth surrounding the National Anthem – Jana Gana Mana, composed  by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, which is well-documented

That day, two different songs were sung at the Indian National Congress session in Calcutta:

1. “Jana Gana Mana”, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, was sung in the morning session.

2. “Badshah Hamara”, a separate song explicitly written in praise of the British monarch, was sung later the same day during a different event connected to the Delhi Durbar celebrations.

The confusion—and later controversy—arose largely due to British-leaning sections of the press, which either carelessly or deliberately conflated the two performances. Some newspapers reported that the Congress session had welcomed the King-Emperor through a song composed by Tagore. This was factually wrong, and intellectually dishonest.

Tagore himself categorically rejected this interpretation. In later correspondence, including his well-known letter of 1937, he clarified that the “Adhinayaka” addressed in Jana Gana Mana referred not to any earthly monarch but to the timeless moral and spiritual guide of humanity—what he described as the Bhagya Vidhata, the dispenser of destiny. To Tagore, equating that concept with a colonial ruler was not merely incorrect; it was philosophically absurd.

Why the Confusion Persisted

The endurance of this falsehood tells us something important about how history gets distorted, for vested interest. Colonial reportage often lacked contextual fidelity, and nationalist cultural expressions were frequently misrepresented to suit imperial optics. Over time, repetition hardened error into “fact” for those unwilling to consult primary sources. Later, in independent India, selective quotation and ideological agendas kept the controversy alive—despite overwhelming scholarly consensus to the contrary.

Yet, a simple reading of Jana Gana Mana—with its invocation of India’s geography, peoples, and civilizational unity—makes the monarch-welcome theory untenable. There is no king named, no empire praised, no sovereign flattered. Instead, there is a nation being imagined—decades before it would formally exist.

A Song That Outgrew Its Moment

When Jana Gana Mana was formally adopted as India’s national anthem on 26 January 1950, after extensive debate in the Constituent Assembly, it was not chosen in a hurry or light heartedly. It was chosen precisely because it transcended politics of the moment and spoke to the enduring idea of India. Incidentally, the same Constituent Assembly accorded the status of the national song to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Vande Mataram, whose sesquicentennial year we celebrate this year.  

Both the national anthem and the national song and their impactful power continue to manifest—in school assemblies, Republic Day parades, and unforgettable collective moments such as the spontaneous mass singing during national events and sporting arena like the one that we witnessed during the India–Pakistan World Cup match in Ahmedabad. In such moments, the anthem ceases to be mere music; it becomes lived experience and so does the national song.

Why This Matters— Birthday Gift

Contrary to my wife, whose family indulges in showering material birthday gifts, yours truly comes from a milieu where birthdays were / are marked not by extravagance but by reflection—temple visits, blessings of elders, and quiet gratitude. That sensibility has shaped my life and my wife has begun to appreciate it. Writing - my passion - as a gift, therefore, my wife feels is more appropriate as a birthday gift than any material gift. This essay is therefore for her—for her patience, her understanding our family ethos, and her unwavering belief in my understanding that ideas matter, truth matters, and memory matters. It is also for my friend Paddya, whose sudden departure reminded me how fragile time is, and how essential it is to record what we know to be true.

And finally, it is for 27 December itself—a date that reminds me, year after year, that personal lives and world history are not parallel lines, but intersecting stories.

Happy Birthday my dear life partner.

May truth always find its voice, memory always find its words, and Jana Gana Mana continue to remind us who we are.

Jai Hind.