Original Vande Mataram tune is a fusion of raga and qawwali: Sulekha ink makers

Makers of the fountain pen ink, Sulekha, once upon a time a household name in India and again back in business, have come out with a collector’s set to mark 150 years of the national song, Vande Mataram.

The limited edition box includes an illustrated booklet containing select facts about the song, one of them being that Vande Mataram was originally set to tune by Jadunath Bhattacharya in a fusion of Raag Mallar and Taal Qawwali, a Sufi music tradition.

“The music was scored by Jadunath​ Bhattacharyya of Bhatpara. The original tune was based on Raag Mallar and Taal Qawwali. Innumerable artists have rendered the song according to their own melodic interpretations since then,” the booklet claimed about the song composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay.

It further said that Rabindranath Tagore first publicly sang the Vande Mataram at the 1896 Indian National Congress session in what was then Calcutta, “setting its tune and popularising its first two stanzas as a powerful Swadeshi anthem”. It rose as the rallying cry during the movement that emerged in response to the British decision to Partition Bengal in 1905, and became central to the wider struggle for Indian independence, finally earning the status of National Song.

The commemorative set, priced at ₹20,000 and launched during this year’s International Kolkata Book Fair, comes in a box made of khadi cloth that contains an ebonite pen holder, a wooden pen rest, a vintage F.N. Gooptu nib, two bottles of specially made Sulekha ink, a brass logo of the Khadi Pratisthan in Sodepur, and, of course, the booklet.

When asked about the extremely high price, Kaushik Maitra, managing director of Sulekha Works Limited, told The Hindu that it was mainly due to the rarity of some of the items included in the set, such as the Gooptu nib. “The pack contains some vintage items which are no longer available and collecting them was very difficult. Each of the Gooptu nibs, for example, is over 100 years old. It’s a limited edition pack, and we believe that the price will not be a factor for real connoisseurs,” Mr. Maitra said.

Sulekha dates back to 1934 when two Bengali brothers, Sankaracharya and Nanigopal Maitra, started, on the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, a small factory in Rajshahi (now in Bangladesh) to manufacture swadeshi ink. In 1939, they shifted to Calcutta and went on to become one of India’s most popular ink brands, manufacturing over one crore 60 ml bottles annually during their best years. But the trade union movement in the 1980s hit business, and the ink factory shut down, relaunching as recently as in November 2020, with social media helping in the revival of public interest in fountain pens.

“The response (to Sulekha inks) has been overwhelming. We are happy with the way the public has embraced us. It is encouraging to see youngsters picking up the fountain pen and ink,” Mr. Maitra said. “We have been working on this tribute pack for more than a year. Being a Swadeshi entity, we felt it is our duty to participate in the celebration of our National Song. It is a humble tribute from Sulekha,” the Sulekha MD said about the Vande Mataram set.