Q 01/05

Vande Mataram first appeared in print in 1882 as a hymn of rebel ascetics in which Bankim Chandra novel?

A) Anandamath

B) Kapalkundala

C) Devi Chaudhurani

D) Bishabriksha

Answer · why

A) Anandamath

Anandamath is set amid an eighteenth-century revolt of ascetics against the East India Company, and its rebel monks sing the poem as a salute to the m...

Q 02/05

Which Bengali poet sang Vande Mataram at the 1896 Congress session, its first political airing?

A) Kazi Nazrul Islam

B) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

C) Sarojini Naidu

D) Rabindranath Tagore

Answer · why

D) Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore sang it at Beadon Square; by 1905 it was a marching song for political activists, and in 1937 he sat on the committee that trimmed...

Q 03/05

What does the title Vande Mataram mean in English, the words inscribed on the 1906 Swadeshi tricolour?

A) Victory to Mother India

B) Mother, protect thy children

C) Mother, I bow to thee

D) Long live the Mother

Answer · why

C) Mother, I bow to thee

Mother, I bow to thee is the usual rendering of that flag's inscription; the Congress had adopted the phrase in 1905 as a pan-Indian salutation to Mot...

Q 04/05

Vande Mataram mixes Bengali with which classical language, the one its two-word title comes from?

A) Old Persian

B) Prakrit

C) Avestan

D) Sanskrit

Answer · why

D) Sanskrit

Sanskrit and Bengali words were mixed in a poem Bankim reportedly wrote in one spontaneous session, years before he found a novel to put it in.

Q 05/05

Which goddess, identified with the motherland in Vande Mataram's later stanzas, led the Congress to drop them in 1937?

A) Radha

B) Durga

C) Ganga

D) Sita

Answer · why

B) Durga

Durga is identified with the land in the later verses, which the Congress committee judged not all communities could be asked to sing; only the openin...