Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya (hereafter, Bankim, 1838-1894) was a great Bengali novelist Sanskritist, philosopher, scholar of natural, physical and social science, humanist, a product of Bengal renaissance, a patriot and a nationalist. A civil servant in Bengal during the British colonial period, Bankim was a “synthetizing genius, ascribing equal importance to both oriental and occidental learning which included philosophy, science, history, social and political science of the West too. He wanted to enrich the treasury of the East with western riches.” [2] In the public imagination, Bankim is better known as a novelist, and as the composer of the song Vande Mataram (‘Mother, I bow to thee’) that became the anthem of India’s freedom struggle. The song was later set to tune by Rabindranath Tagore, and the first two stanzas were adopted as India’s National Song. [3]
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