Hindu Mela

**Hindu Mela** () was a political and cultural festival (mela). It happened every year in India during the late 19th century. Nabagopal Mitra, Rajnarayan Basu, and Manomohan Bose started it in 1867. At first, they called it the Chaitra Mela. They wanted to bring Indian people together. The mela was famous for sports, local arts and crafts, and songs and poems about loving the country. The mela met regularly until 1880. After that, it became less important because people made other groups, such as the Indian National Congress.

### Founding and goals

In 1867, the National Paper printed a paper by Rajnarayan Basu. It was called _Prospectus of a Society for the Promotion of National Feeling among the Educated Natives of Bengal_. This paper gave ideas to Nabagopal Mitra and Debendranath Tagore. They worked with Basu and Manomohan Bose to start the Hindu mela in 1867. At first, the mela was called the _Chaitra Mela_. This was because it happened on the last day of Chaitra. Chaitra is the last month of the Bengali calendar. The Tagore family of Jorashako gave money to help start the mela. Some family members also helped organise it. Some of them read poems and wrote songs for the event.

At the start, Nabagopal Mitra led the mela as the Assistant Secretary. Ganendranath Tagore was the Secretary. He was Debendranath's first son. Ganendranath died when he was 28 years old. Then, his nephew Dwijendranath Tagore became the secretary during the third meeting. He helped the mela run for four more years. During these four years, Dwijendranath and Mishra made the Hindu Mela a national event. The event happened once a year. So, they started a National Society. This society worked on the mela's goals when the mela was not happening.

During the second meeting of the Hindu mela in 1878, Mishra and Gaganendranath Tagore made a list of six goals. The main goal was to make a national council. This council would help Indians feel like brothers and be united. The council also had to improve the position of Indians in the colony. It wanted Indians to not need British services and products as much. The organisers started writing a report every year about the council's work. They showed this report at the mela. There were other goals too. They wanted to help local education, arts, crafts, and sports. They wanted to help anyone working for these goals. To do this, they made six committees with leaders of the Hindu society.

### Later years

Satyendranath Tagore was also part of the Hindu Mela. He was Debendranath's second son. He was not at the first meeting in April 1867 because he was in western India. But he was at the second meeting. He wrote a song called "_mile sabe Bharat santan, ektan gaho gaan_" (unite, India's children, sing in unison). People called this the first national anthem of India. Rabindranath Tagore was Satyendranath's youngest brother. He became very involved in the mela. When he was 15, he wrote a poem called "A Gift to the Hindu Mela." He read it out loud during the ninth meeting. This was one of his first gifts to the mela. Later, the newspaper _Amrita Bazar Patrika_ printed the poem. It is one of the first poems published with Tagore's name.

At the Hindu mela, Rabindranath learned about feelings against the British for the first time. On the tenth birthday of the mela, Rabindranath read a poem called "_Dillir Durbar_". In this poem, he spoke against the Viceroy Lord Lytton. Lytton had decided to hold a big and expensive party in Delhi. Rabindranath was not happy because the durbar called Queen Victoria the "Empress of India" while there was a famine. Many people in the country had no food. The poem said this was wrong. It asked other Indians to "sing a different tune". This was one of the first times he publicly attacked the British Raj.

Some organisers of the Hindu mela made a secret group called the Sanjivani Sabha. This group made _swadeshi_ (local) matchsticks and cloth. They wove the cloth on _swadeshi_ looms. The Hindu mela also helped people learn about local sports. In the first meeting, famous wrestlers came to Calcutta. The mela gave them medals. In the next meeting, there were contests for local sports. These included wrestling and _lathi_-play. Lathi-play is a game where people fight with bamboo sticks. The mela also showed Indian martial arts and ways to survive. Because of this, many schools started teaching physical education (P.E.). Physical education also became a subject in the Indian Civil Service exams.