Anandamath

The purpose-The main motive of the study is to understand the narrative of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath as an expansion and critique of its thematic core 'Vande Mataram'. Design/Methodology/Approach-The Divine personification of a Nation as a Matrabhumi (the one which nurtures), Punyabhumi (the Holy Land) and Dharmabhumi (the one with righteous conduct) inspires fear in us, a fear which will not dissociate us, but an awestruck attraction which is beyond our mortal being. The mother as a divine Shakti, Goddess Durga is Vrihad, grand but we as Santan are the part of the Bharat-Mata, who in the past was Jagaddhatri, Protectress of the world, wonderful, perfect, and rich. In contemporary nuances of present-day politics, we as readers can see the mother has become an idol of Goddess Kali, in the haunt of a wild beast, enveloped in darkness, full of blackness and gloom, one who is stripped of all and therefore naked. Wearing our sins and vices in the garland of a skull as an ornament, where the whole country is a burial ground and she tramples her god under her feet. The divine personified mother now will turn into goddess Durga, ten armed radiants in the light of the early sun, laughing and extending her ten arms towards the ten regions. The song Vande Mataram features as the manifesto of the Sanyasi group where words of its verses are rich in adjectives that praise every aspect of the country and emphasizes idolizing her as Goddess reincarnate. Findings-Anandamath is a text that is enthralled with the resonance of Vande Mataram in every character. As a post text, it is largely discussed in the context of history and politics but its narrative unfolds itself in three further aspects, namely Semiotics, Discursive, and Aesthetic. Research Implications-The paper offers an insight into a semantic reverberation of Indian unconscious and traditional conventional context which gives an organic and a particular cultural perspective to the song Vande Mataram. Anandamath traverses the shift from the wilderness of nature to the refinement of culture. Wish for History is foregrounded in the novel to give us the idea of the nation that may not have been established. Bankim Chandra alludes to the imagined persona to give us a wish for a possible history, giving us a license with the factual history. The paper aims to analyze the historicality of the novel that juggles through the 'imagined' and 'lived' of the author. There is an overlapping of ideas and contradictions in the ideology of the novel because it is writing from contested political terrain. This paper attempts to study the problematics of depraved masses and natives who are fighting for the contested 'nation' space' in times of famines and crises. The idea of Punyaland is vitiated (and thus the 'unmaking' of a nation) and this is carried in the novel through language, metaphors, and discourse. The disintegration of family metaphorically hints at the fragmentation of the bigger structure, since family is the basic unit of a larger system, the nation too is in chaos. The Study reflects the effacement of the self, the annihilation of oneself in a given national space. Thus the writer foregrounds a formation of a spiritual nation from the threshold of Damphati Dharma (Language of household) through linguistic and cultural otherness.

This essay attempts to morph the graph of the “Nation” in Anandamath into a graph of multiple desires. That is, it concerns itself with some of the personationalities of desire which find graphic relief in the novel. The main purpose of the essay is to tease out some of the gender implications of Anandamath’s national/notional con/figurations. To that end, and in the process, the essay also offers an alternative perspective on the structural and thematic coherence of the novel; a re-reading of its moral anchor and emphasis; a fresh look at its coding of the political.