Vande Mataram: The Official Music Video

Hariharan's Vande Mataram now has its official music video. Gaon Connection made the film for the opening recording of The Anthem: Vande Mataram, and it arrives in the song's 150th year.

A journey across India

The video opens on two small children in white, carrying the tricolour across a lawn. From there it travels. There are snowfields, a hill village under the Himalaya, dry mountain valleys hung with prayer flags, forests seen from above, and the sea. Buddhist monks walk in single file. A bride's forehead is painted for her wedding. An old man in a red turban laughs into the camera, a woman feeds a deer, and village dancers move through a clearing in bright skirts.

Hariharan is seen in two settings. On a dark stage he sings under a single light, close to the microphone. Outdoors, he walks alone through green fields in the low sun, a shawl over his shoulder.

Dance runs through the film. Isha Ratan, Misha Ratan and Sunaina Jaiswal perform Kathak on a darkened stage, and Jeet Sharma dances the contemporary sequences.

Bankim Chandra's verses in Hariharan's setting

Hariharan composed this setting of Rishi Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Vande Mataram and sings it himself. Rakesh Chaurasia plays the flute solos. Jolly Mukherjee arranged the music and R S Mani produced it, bringing sitar, sarod, veena, mridangam, pakhawaj and tabla together with a string section.

The recording opens The Anthem: Vande Mataram, an album released on 14 September 2026 and curated by the Centre for Gramophone and Allied Studies (CeGRAMS), with NMDC Ltd. as principal partner.

Made with Gaon Connection

Neelesh Misra produced the video for Gaon Connection and Ritam Nandy directed it, with Abhishek Verma as director of photography and Ambar Chaturvedi as editor. The complete credits are in the video's description on YouTube.

150 years of Vande Mataram

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Vande Mataram in 1875 and later placed it in his novel Anandamath, published in 1882. The song was first recorded in 1905. In 1938, at the request of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Timir Baran gave the complete song an orchestral setting.

The Anthem returns to it in several forms: the original, Subramania Bharati's Tamil rendering, an English version by Colonial Cousins, two taranas and an electronic interpretation. The story of each is told in The Anthem: Hariharan's Vande Mataram.

Watch and listen

Watch the video on the Singer Hariharan YouTube channel, or listen to the recording on Spotify with the rest of the album.