India National Anthem — Jana Gana Mana

"Jana Gana Mana" is a hymn to the "adhinayaka" — the guide or dispenser of India's destiny. Rather than glorifying war or a ruler, it calls a roll of the land itself: Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and the Maratha country, the Dravidian south, Odisha and Bengal, the Vindhya and Himalaya ranges, and the Yamuna and Ganga rivers — a vision of many regions awakening to one shared name.

Tagore's language is deliberately inclusive and spiritual; the "dispenser of destiny" has been read both as the divine and as the collective spirit of the nation. It ends not in triumph over enemies but in repeated cries of "jaya he" — victory, blessing — to that unifying force.

Rabindranath Tagore wrote both the words and the melody, first performed at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in December 1911. Only the first stanza was adopted as the national anthem in 1950; a formal rendition runs about 52 seconds.

Tagore is the only person to have authored the national anthems of two countries — India's "Jana Gana Mana" and Bangladesh's "Amar Shonar Bangla". The anthem is played daily in schools and at public occasions across India, and its opening line is among the most recognised phrases in the country.

"Jana Gana Mana" is the national anthem of India, adopted on 24 January 1950. It is one of the world's national anthems, written by the poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

The words are the first of five stanzas of a Bengali hymn Tagore composed in 1911. Because Tagore died in 1941, the work is in the public domain in India.