The author of "Vande Mataram" is Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (also spelled Chattopadhyay). He wrote the poem in the 1870s in a highly Sanskritised form of Bengali. It was first published in 1882 as part of his Bengali novel Anandamath

. The poem became a rallying cry during the Indian Independence Movement and was adopted as the National Song of India in 1937