Bankim, Vande Mataram and Vivekananda

Two cultural currents fed the rise of nationalist feeling, and neither was political to begin with.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was a sub-magistrate in a Bengal district who wrote popular Bengali novels of romance and Indian history. In 1882 he published Anandamath, set during the Sannyasi Rebellion and the 1770 famine.

In it, sannyasis worship the motherland as the divine mother, and in a key scene recite the poem Bande Mataram, which became a rallying cry in the 1905 awakening.

The poem was actually written earlier, in 1875. Its title is the Bengali form of the Sanskrit 'Vande Mātaram': 'Praise to the Mother', or 'I bow to the Motherland'. (Bengali has no 'va' sound, only 'ba'.) Rabindranath Tagore set it to music and sang it at the 1896 Congress session, and in 1950 it became India's National Song.

The second current was Narendranath Datta, born in 1863, who studied Western literature, history and philosophy alongside ancient Indian texts and classical music, and played several sports. At 18 he met Sri Ramakrishna and became his disciple, as Swami Vivekananda.

In 1893 his speech at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago defended India's civilisation and culture and made a deep impression. He founded the Ramakrishna Mission, combining spiritual practice with social service.

He never took part in political action. What he did was urge Indians to find their inner strength and overcome fear, weakness and self-doubt: "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached."

He encouraged science too, once advising Jamsetji Tata to create a research institute, which became the Indian Institute of Science. He died at 39, and his birthday, 12 January, is National Youth Day.