When Virat Kohli and his men in blue stand shoulder to shoulder with their Bangladeshi counterparts before the Champions Trophy semi-final kicks off on Thursday, the sides will underscore, maybe even unknowingly, the fact that literature knows no borders.
Mashrafe Mortaza and his fellow Bangladeshis will stand at attention to the tune of Amar Sonar Bangla (My Golden Bengal) while the Indians gathered at Edgbaston will sing Jana Gana Mana. But why is that special?
Here’s why.
Both the national anthems were written and composed by the same man – Nobel Laureate and poet extraordinaire, Rabindranath Tagore.
While Tagore wrote Amar Sonar Bangla in 1905, it wasn’t until 1911 that he composed Jana Gana Mana.
The latter was officially proclaimed as India’s national anthem by our first President, Rajendra Prasad, on 24 January 1950 – two days before India’s Constitution came into force. And Bangladesh adopted Amar Sonar Bangla as its national anthem in 1971, the year of its Independence.
Tagore did not live long enough to see either of his songs get accorded the status of national anthem – and that too in two different countries. Little would he have guessed that the Bengal he wrote Amar Sonar Bangla for would become part of a separate country than the one whose future prosperity he sought blessings for in Jana Gana Mana.
Seven-and-a-half decades since Tagore’s demise and four-and-a-half since the formation of Bangladesh, the on-field rivalry between India and its eastern neighbour has often heated up and will probably do so again on Thursday, as the teams battle it out for a spot in the final of the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy.
At such a time, the songs are a pleasant reminder of the shared history of our two nations.
In (Dual) National Interest
But Tagore isn’t the only one with the distinction of having written the national anthems of two countries. The anthems of the South American nations of Paraguay and Uruguay were both written by Uruguayan poet Francisco Acuña de Figueroa!
Elsewhere, Egyptian composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab is credited for the erstwhile Libyan national anthem as well as the anthems of Tunisia and United Arab Emirates. That’s three national anthems composed by one man.
Tagore, Figueroa and Wahab – the real international composers, eh?
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