According to the novel Anandamath by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, song Vande Mataram was sung by which character?

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Correct — C, Sipahi Bhavananda. In Anandamath the song is first heard from Bhavananda, one of the santans — the band of ascetic-soldiers at the centre of the novel. He has rescued the famine-struck zamindar Mahendra Singh, and as the two walk through the night Bhavananda sings 'Vande Mataram'. Mahendra objects that he can see only a piece of land, no mother; Bhavananda explains that the Mother in the song is the motherland herself. That exchange is the reason the scene is famous — it is where Bankim converts a hymn to a goddess into a hymn to the country, and it is put in the mouth of the fighting monk, not the hero.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Mahendra is the listener in that scene, not the singer. He is the wealthy man of Padachinha ruined by the famine of 1770, who hears the song, questions it, and only later joins the santans.  (b) Kalyani is Mahendra's wife, whose flight through the famine-struck countryside with her infant daughter opens the novel. Her role is the human cost of the famine; the song is not hers.  (d) Shanti is the striking woman character of the novel — Jivananda's wife, who disguises herself to join the santans as a fighter — but she enters later and is not the character who sings the song in this scene.

Concept: Anandamath (1882) is set in Bengal after the catastrophic famine of 1770 and builds its plot around the Sanyasi rebellion, with the santans — monk-soldiers who call the land their Mother — as its rebels. Bankim had composed 'Vande Mataram' in the mid-1870s, before the novel existed, and then wove it into the story, where Bhavananda sings it to Mahendra. The song's later career is the political fact worth knowing: it was sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1896 by Rabindranath Tagore, became the rallying cry of the Swadeshi movement after the partition of Bengal in 1905, and on 24 January 1950 the Constituent Assembly gave it the status of National Song, to be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana.

State PCS 2026 Q99 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q99 — History PYQ with Answer