This Independence Day, let's watch this Award-winning Short Film.
The language of the writing on the wall in the background is Odia
The language of the writing on the wall in the background is Odia
Showing posts with label Nation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nation. Show all posts
Monday, 15 August 2016
Saturday, 15 August 2015
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
This Independence Day, let us listen to the historic 'Tryst with Destiny' speech of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at midnight on August 14-15, 1947 at the Constituent Assembly:
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
Happy Utkal Diwas
Wishing all Odias, in Odisha, in the rest of India and the Odia diaspora all over the world, A VERY HAPPY UTKAL DIWAS!
Vande Utkal Janani!
Let us celebrate by viewing an Odissi dance presentation by the legendary danseuse Late Sanjukta Panigrahi, goddess of Odissi dance! The vocal music is by another legend of Odisha, her husband the Late Raghunath Panigrahi.
...and more...
Source of videos: You TubeVande Utkal Janani!
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Republic Day
Although the Constitution of India was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on the 26th November, 1949, it came into full force only on the 26th January, 1950, on which day India became a Republic (‘Sovereign Democratic Republic’ as per the Constitution). Some parts of the Constitution, like Articles 5 to 9 dealing with citizenship, had come into effect immediately on adoption.The Constitution of India replaced Government of India Act, 1935, enacted by British Parliament, as the governing document of India.
The date 26th January was chosen by the Constituent Assembly to commemorate the 26th January, 1930 on which day the ‘Purna Swaraj’ (complete independence) Resolution was adopted at the Lahore session of Indian National Congress (the original nationalist, all-embracing organization, the Indian National Congress, not the present truncated, emaciated and grossly politicised and totally transformed outfit, the original nationalist party having been split and re-split by Indira Gandhi in 1969 and again in 1978 to suit her personal aspirations, whose official name since 1978, has been ‘Indian National Congress – I’, the ‘I’ standing for ‘Indira’).
On the 26th January, 1950, the first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, participated in the first Republic Day Parade, riding on a traditional horse-drawn carriage. Since then, morals have deteriorated and security has become a high risk affair and, understandably, the open and risky horse-drawn carriage has given way to a high security limousine used by present-day Presidents.
Here is a view of the first Republic Day parade of India:
On Republic Day, I had been invited by the school in my village where I had studied as a child, to unfurl the National Flag. In the meeting that followed, I asked the students the difference between Independence Day and Republic Day. No student could answer satisfactorily. I explained to them that Independence Day is celebrated to commemorate India's independence on the 15th August, 1947, when India became free from British Rule and new Government headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took office. However India continued to be a Dominion and the British King continued to be India's formal Head of State. The Constitution of India providing for a President as the Head of State, came into full force on the 26th January, 1950 and Dr. Rajendra Prasad was sworn in as the first President of India. On that day, the British monarch ceased to be India's Head of State.
A country is a Republic where one of its own citizens is the Head of State. Australia and Canada are independent States but they continue to be British Dominions and the British Monarch continues to be their formal Head of State. Lord Mountbatten and Chakrabarti Rajagopalachari, appointed by the British Monarch, were the last 2 Governors General of India. At present, citizens of British Dominions are appointed as their Governors General and represent the British Monarch on formal occasions.
Fittingly, on the Indian Independence Day on the 15th August, Prime Minister of India as the head of Government of India, unfurls the National Flag. And on the Republic Day, the National Flag is unfurled by the President, the Head of State.
India has an Independence Day and a Republic Day but U S A has only Independence Day celebrated on the 4th of July, to commemorate the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, 1776. That day itself U S A had become a Republic with a President as its Head of State. It severed all its governance-connections with its British rulers on that day.
Friday, 8 February 2013
India's National Anthem And Song
Just as our country has two
official names, India
and Bharat, it has two national songs – one national anthem and a national
song, Jana Gana Mana and Vande
Mataram respectively.
Soon after Independence
in August, 1947, the national anthem of India was to be played at the U N
O. There was no Indian National Anthem at that time. Government of India, as a
provisional measure, advised the Indian Delegation to play Jana Gana Mana. A gramophone record of the song was played at the U
N.
Two days before the
Constitution of India came into force on the 26th January, 1950, the
Constituent Assembly adopted Jana Gana
Mana as our National Anthem on the 24th January, 1950. That day,
Dr. Rajendra Prasad, President of the Constituent Assembly made this Statement:
“The composition consisting
of the words and music known as Jana Gana
Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to alterations in the words
as the Government may authorize as occasion arises; and the song Vande Mataram, which has played a
historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally
with Jana Mana Gana and shall have
equal status with it.”
Two songs had been used
during the struggle for independence. The more widely used was Vande Matarm which appears in Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee’s novel Anand Math
published in 1882. However, its origin dates back much earlier, to perhaps the
17th or the 18th Century. It was sung at the session of
Indian National Congress in 1896. This song was set to music by Rabindranath Tagore.
It was a popular song during the ant-partition movement in Bengal.
It was sung during the Bengal Provincial Conference held at Barisal in April. 1906. Later in that year,
Tagore himself sang it on the opening day of the Congress session.
In 1937, the Congress
Working Committee appointed a sub-committee consisting of Maulana Abdul Kalam
Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Acharya Narendra Dev to examine,
in consultation with Rabindranath Tagore, the suitability of this song as the
National Anthem. The Committee decided that only the first two stanzas of the
song Vande Mataram should be sung at national gatherings and that any other song of an
unobjectionable nature could be sung along with it.
There was a controversy that
the phrase ‘Bharata Bhagya Vidhata’ referred to the British King George V who
happened to be on a visit to India
at the time. Tagore himself rubbished this interpretation saying, “ I should
insult myself if I cared to answer those who consider me capable of such
unbounded stupidity.”
Azad Hind Government of
Subhas Chandra Bose rendered the song from Bengali to Hindustani and adopted
this version as its national anthem.
There is a view that the
reason why Jana Gana Mana was chosen
over Vande Mataram was probably that
the latter did not lend itself to harmonization
In a statement made on the
25th August, 1948 in Parliament (The Constituent Assembly functioned
as the Provisional Parliament till the First General Elections under the
Constitution in 1952.) Jawaharlal Nehru said, “It is unfortunate that some kind
of argument has arisen between Vande
Mataram and Jana gana Mana. Vande
Mataram is obviously and indisputably the premier national song of India with a
great historical tradition. It was intimately connected with our struggle for
freedom. That position is bound to retain and no other song can replace it. It
represents the passion and poignancy of that struggle, but perhaps not so much
the culmination of it.”
The standard time for a
formal rendition of Jana Gana Mana, India’s
National Anthem is 52 seconds.
Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!
First postage stamps of Independence India, 15th August,1947 - Kolkata
-
Price
Rs. 899 -
Condition
New -
Product Type
Stamps -
Located In
Sudder Stree...
Ad Details
| Image of Stamp | Description | Date Published | Quantity Published | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
Inauguration of Republic of India Denomination : 2 Annas |
26 Jan 1950 | 19.7 Million |
| 2 |  |
Inauguration of Republic of India Denomination : 3 1/2 Annas |
26 Jan 1950 | 1.2 Million |
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India And Bharat
The Preamble to The
Constitution of India begins with, ‘WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA…. Article 1, Clause (1) of The Constitution of
India states, “India,
that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”. In the Preamble, ‘India’ is not
followed by the explanatory name ‘Bharat’.
India is perhaps the only country of the world which has
two official names.
Why did the framers of our
Constitution, with all their nationalistic fervour, decide to continue with the
name ‘India’
and not choose the name ‘Bharat’?
Somewhere, I had read that
the reason for this was that the name of country was long recorded as ‘India’
in the United Nations Organisation and all other international organizations.
Although the country was called ‘Bharat’ in the ancient texts including the
Vedas, this name had not been legally recorded anywhere either in India or in the
outside world. Had we given the country the
name ‘Bharat’ in the Constitution, we would have legally become a new
State since the region was partitioned and a new country, ‘Pakistan’ was carved out of it.
‘Bharat’ would have legally become a ‘new’ State like Pakistan. India was one
of the original member-countries which had joined the U N O when it was formed
in 1945. ‘Bharat’ would have, like Pakistan, become a new member of U
N O.
However, when I searched for
this in the Constituent Assembly Debates from internet, I could
not locate any discussion about this legal aspect about the choice of the name of the country,
not locate any discussion about this legal aspect about the choice of the name of the country,
Many people are under the
impression that ‘India’
is the name given to us by the British rulers. This is not a fact. The name
‘Bharat’ appears in the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas as well as the epic
Mahabharat. Our country was originally called 'Bharat' after Bharat, the brave son of Shakuntala and Dushyant. When the Persians came, they called it 'Sindhu Desh' after the river Sindhu. The word ‘India’
began to be used when the Greeks came here in the 3rd Century B C. Many
know that when Alexander asked Puru, the defeated King of Sindhu, how the latter would
like to be treated, he replied that he expected to be treated like a King by
another King. The Greeks called the Sindhu river as ‘Indus’.
They came across this river when they entered the area and so, called the
country as ‘India’.
Since then, our country has been known as ‘India’ in the international
community.
When Columbus
set out on the sea-route, he landed, in 1492, in what later came to be known as
America (so named after
Amerigo Vespuccii, who landed in The New World in 1501 and realized that it was
a new country and not India.)
That is why the native South Americans are still called ‘Red Indians’.
(By the way, as the river
Sindhu became a part of Pakistan,
one member of the Constituent Assembly suggested in a lighter vain that Pakistan should be named ‘Hindustan’!
The word ‘Hindustan’ is linked to the river
Sindhu and has nothing to do with Hindu religion.)
The Constituent Assembly
formed several Committees to discuss and prepare Drafts of the different parts
of the Constitution. Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel headed 2 important
Committes, viz. ‘Union Powers Committee’ and ‘State Powers Committee’
respectively. Similarly, there were other Committees to deal with Fundamental
Rights and other parts of the proposed Constitution. Reports of all these Committees
were processed, compiled and collated by the Secretariat of the Constituent
Assembly, headed by S. N. Mukherjee, who was the chief draftsman. He was
assisted by an expert ‘Constitutional Advisor’, B. N. Rau, a retired I C S
Officer.
The Constituent Assembly
then appointed a ‘Committee to Scrutinise the Draft Constitution’, headed by
Dr. B. R.Ambedkar. The other Members were Gobind Ballav Pant, K M Munshi, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer,N Gopalaswamy Ayyangar and T T Krishnamachari.This Committee was and is popularly known as Drafting
Committee. This Committee finalized the Draft Constitution which was presented
to the Constituent Assembly for discussion and adoption with necessary changes.
This Draft contained Article 1 (1) which stated, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a
Union of States”.
When Article 1 of the Draft Constitution was
discussed in the Constituent Assembly, the debate was on whether the country
should be named as ‘India’,
or ‘Union of India’ or ‘United States of India’. Piloting the Draft, Dr. Ambedkar said, “India has been known as ‘India’ throughout
history and all these past years. As a member of U N O, the name of the country
is India
and all agreements are signed as such.”
H V Kamath proposed that the
Draft Article 1(1) should be amended as:
(i)
Bharat, or in
the English language, India,
shall be a Union of States, or
(ii) Hind, or in the English language, India, shall be
a Union of States.
Personally, he preferred the
first.
Kamalapati Tripathy felt
that it would have been more proper to say, ‘Bharat, that is, India”.
H V Kamath’s proposal was
negated by a vote of 51 to 38.
Apparently, the Constituent
Assembly never considered ‘Bharat’ as the only name of the country. ( I shall be glad to be proved wrong.)
The Draft Constitution was
prepared in English language and adopted as such by the Constituent Assembly.
After this Draft in English
was adopted, a Hindi translation of the Constitution was prepared. This
translation was approved by the Constituent Assembly as the official version. The 308 members signed the hand-written English and Hindi versions of the Constitution on the 24th January, 1950. When the original version was adopted on the 26th November, 1949, 284 members had signed it.
The original Constitution is hand-written with beautiful calligraphy, each page beautified and decorated by artists including Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha and Nandalal Bose (the famous painter) from Shantiniketan.
Years later, there was a controversy as it was said that after all, a translation was only a translation and could never be same thing as the original. Apparently, this legal conundrum is yet to be resolved. Hair- splitting?
Perhaps, had the Constitution been first prepared in Hindi and then translated into English, the sole name 'Bharat' would have been chosen or 'Bharat' would have been followed by the explanatory words 'that is India'.
But then, the framers of our Constitution, a large number of whom were lawyers, were familiar with British jurisprudence and the language used in the Courts at that time, was (and even now, is) English.
The original Constitution is hand-written with beautiful calligraphy, each page beautified and decorated by artists including Beohar Ram Manohar Sinha and Nandalal Bose (the famous painter) from Shantiniketan.
Years later, there was a controversy as it was said that after all, a translation was only a translation and could never be same thing as the original. Apparently, this legal conundrum is yet to be resolved. Hair- splitting?
Perhaps, had the Constitution been first prepared in Hindi and then translated into English, the sole name 'Bharat' would have been chosen or 'Bharat' would have been followed by the explanatory words 'that is India'.
But then, the framers of our Constitution, a large number of whom were lawyers, were familiar with British jurisprudence and the language used in the Courts at that time, was (and even now, is) English.
Interestingly and incongruously, there was a
reference to the British House of Commons in our Constitution as adopted by the
Constituent Assembly. Article 105(3) originally read as:
In other respects, the powers, privileges and
immunities of each House of Parliament and of its members and the Committees of
each House shall be such as may from time to time be defined by Parliament by
law, and, until so defined, shall be those of the members of House of Commons of United Kingdom.
The reference in the
Constitution of a sovereign country to the practice (U. K. does not have a
written Constitution.) in another country was odd. In 1978, when the Janata
Government led by Morarjee Desai was in power, the last part was amended as:
.. shall be those of that House and its
members and committees immediately before the coming into force of section 15
of the Constitution (Forty Fourth Amendment) Act, 1978.
The original Article 194(3)
dealing with the powers and privileges of members of State Legislatures was
similarly amended in 1978.
This is a queer situation
and if one asks what these privileges were before the Amendment, it will lead
one to the British House of Commons!
It may be pertinent to add
here that these ‘powers and privileges’ of the legislators have not yet been
defined either by our Parliament or any State Legislature. Parliamentary
privileges continue to be in a nebulous area and have on occasions, been used
to punish and harass citizens and journalists.
By the way, the Constitution
was adopted the on 29th November, 1949 and it came into force on the 26th
January, 1950. This date was chosen to commemorate the 26th January,
which was declared as the ‘Independence Day’ by the nationalist leaders led by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji and these leaders were confident of freeing India from foreign rule. However, they declared that if India would be given dominion status like Australia and Canada by the end of 1929, the demand for full freedom would be deferred. A session of the Indian National Congress was being held at Lahore on the 31st December, 1929.Since no such assurance came, at the stroke of midnight on the 31st December, 1929, Indian National Congress declared 'independence'. It was decided that on the 26th January, 1930, people all over the country would take the Pledge of Freedom. That date was called 'Independence Day' and every year, till the 15th August,1948, the 26th January, was celebrated as such.
('Dominion status' means that the British monarch remains the official Head of State but complete freedom is given to the area. India was in this position till the 26th January, 1950, when our Constitution came into force, India became a Republic and Dr. Rajendra Prasad took over as the Interim President on the 26th January, 1950. He was elected as the full-fledged President after the Parliament and State Assemblies were formed following the First General Elections in 1952. From 1950 to 1952, the Constituent Assembly functioned as the Provisional Parliament. Australia and Canada continue to be British Dominions with the British Queen as their formal Head of State. Their Governors General - Australians and Canadians - are appointed by the British Queen. Lord Mountbatten was the last Vice-Roy and the first Governor General of India. He was Governor General of India from the 15th August, 1947 to the 21st June, 1948. C. Rajagopalachari (the first Indian G.G. and the last G.G. of India) was the Governor General of India from 21.06.1948 to 26.01.1950.)
('Dominion status' means that the British monarch remains the official Head of State but complete freedom is given to the area. India was in this position till the 26th January, 1950, when our Constitution came into force, India became a Republic and Dr. Rajendra Prasad took over as the Interim President on the 26th January, 1950. He was elected as the full-fledged President after the Parliament and State Assemblies were formed following the First General Elections in 1952. From 1950 to 1952, the Constituent Assembly functioned as the Provisional Parliament. Australia and Canada continue to be British Dominions with the British Queen as their formal Head of State. Their Governors General - Australians and Canadians - are appointed by the British Queen. Lord Mountbatten was the last Vice-Roy and the first Governor General of India. He was Governor General of India from the 15th August, 1947 to the 21st June, 1948. C. Rajagopalachari (the first Indian G.G. and the last G.G. of India) was the Governor General of India from 21.06.1948 to 26.01.1950.)
Isn’t it time to amend the
Constitution to name the country as ‘Bharat’ only, at the latest, before we celebrate the
centenary year of our independence in 2047?
Happy Republic Day!
Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!
TAIL PIECE:
Can we visualize a day when
a ‘United States of India’, comprising the present India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh will
be formed? Even, Mynamar, (the erstwhile Burma)
which was a part of India
till 1936, can be invited to join it! Isn't the region called 'the Indian sub-continent'?
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
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