Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed the song Vande Mataram which was included in his famous novel Ananda Math. The song became inspiration for generations of freedom fighters and the utterance “Vande Mataram” became a popular slogan and mantra among them. After independence the song was accepted as the National Song. Different translators at different points of time have translated the song into English. Among these translations most common is by Aurobindo Ghosh or Sri Aurobindo, the freedom fighter turned spiritual leader. There is an anonymous translation which has later been incorporated by Basanta Koomar Roy in his translation of Ananda Math. More recently, Julius J. Lipner, a half-Czech and half-Indian Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion, University of Cambridge, has translated the song as part of his translation of the novel Ananda Math published last year from OUP. Done in different periods of political history, by translators of different identities and different objectives, these translations share similarities and differences. This paper will attempt a comparative analysis of all these translations from different social, political, religious and linguistic perspectives.
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