"This poem can be found in the book of poems by Tagore – 'Katha-O-Kahini' and is an extremely popular, inspirational poem," says Rajat Kanta Ray, vice-chancellor of the Visva Bharati University. It was also universally recognised as a source of inspiration to several other Bengali writers as well as the militant youths of those times who were fighting for India's Independence. The poem, which is part of the academic syllabus in every English and vernacular medium school of West Bengal, is also one of those powerful creations of Tagore which mothers love to teach their children, in every Bengali household. He sang paens to the great warrior, using terms like "singher moto shrinkhalgato" (lion in shackles) to describe his arrest by the Mughals. It was in 1899 that the Nobel Laureate – whose 150th birth anniversary was celebrated on May 9, ahead of Baba Banda Singh Bahadur's tercentenary of Sirhind Fateh on May 14 -wrote his famous poem 'Bandi Bir' (Captive Hero) based on the Sikh warrior and his brave Sikh fighters who took on the tyrannical Mughal army despite being outnumbered and ill-equipped in terms of weapons. Banda was immortalized in literature by one of the greatest poets of the times, Rabindranath Tagore. CHANDIGARH: The Sikh community may have taken years to offer its collective homage to the ascetic-turned-warrior, Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, but his universal appeal was recognized by poets and intellectuals even before India became independent.
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