A four-day awareness exhibition to mark the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram ended in Alipurduar on Sunday.
The exhibition, organised at the Manna Dey Sarani residence of music researcher and discographer Deboprasad Das, traced the history of India’s national song from the gramophone era.
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay had written Vande Mataram in 1875.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on November 7, 2025, that the period between then and November 7, 2026, would be observed across the country as the 150th year of Vande Mataram.
Das, through his exhibition, showed the song’s role in India’s freedom struggle, its association with luminaries such as Rabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghosh and its use in Bengali and Hindi films across decades. Exhibits included rare shellac records of Vande Mataram from 1906 to 1976 preserved by Das.
Das, 70, has spent the last four decades researching and documenting Indian music history. His archive includes newspaper clippings, booklets and shellac records spanning decades from 1931 to 1980.