Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote the verses of Vande Mataram around 1875-76, which is what makes 2025-26 its 150th year. The song reached a wide public when it appeared in his Bengali novel Anandamath, published in 1882, and it entered political life at the 1896 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, where Rabindranath Tagore sang it — the moment usually cited as its first political rendition. Through the Swadeshi movement and after, it became the standard cry of nationalist gatherings, and the fact that a novel's song became a movement's anthem is the reason it appears in modern history papers rather than only in culture ones. Its formal status was settled on 24 January 1950, when the Constituent Assembly adopted it and the first President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, stated that it should be honoured equally with the national anthem. That formulation is exact and is what gets tested: Vande Mataram is the National Song, Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem, both were settled on the same day, and the two hold equal status without being the same thing. Unlike the National Anthem, the National Song has no prescribed duration or protocol for its rendition.