Would Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev all appear in a film made by a little-known Indian producer of advertising films?

Could an old patriotic song from the 30’s, almost forgotten by modern India, suddenly become the rage on MTV and be shown simultaneously on every network from Star TV to Doordarshan to Zee TV?

Could what started out as a Hindu chant in the British Raj be transformed by a Muslim singer-composer into a galvanizing wake-up call for Modern India, and catch the imagination of an entire nation? Would Indians of all ages stop whatever they were doing to watch 300 films about patriotism and rush out to buy a half million cassettes of a non-filmi song in the first week of its release?

Highly unlikely, you would say. Well, this year all this came to pass, and appropriately enough in the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. This is the year that the song Vande Mataram was reborn, hitting the national consciousness, making those who had forgotten remember, and invigorating the young who have always taken freedom for granted. And itÕs all thanks to a small team -- a singer, a producer and a patriot.

G. Bharat of Bharatbala Productions, popularly known as Bala, is a producer who has been making advertising commercials for the last ten years for such clients as Pepsi, Nestle and Seagrams. How his mind moved from Pepsi jingles to patriotism is all due to his father, V. Ganapathy, a freedom fighter who was the closest associate of K. Kamaraj in the South. Recalls Bharat: “He’s been pushing me to do something big for India in the media. It all started with his inspiration. If you look into history, there was one emotion, one voice that Indians shared in the pre-independence freedom struggle, one passion and we want to invoke that now as a catalyst for the next 50 years -- and that is Vande Mataram.”

Vande Mataram is derived from Sanskrit and means “I salute my motherland.” To take this forgotten song and make it relevant today was the challenge for this marketing man. Could one sell patriotism as easily as tires or sodas?

This song has been interpreted in many ways in the last 50 years but Bharat and his co-producer, his wife Kanika Myers Bharat, wanted to re-vitalize it and create a new pride among Indians, bringing alive the magic and glory of the tri-color. Music seemed the logical way to arouse the nationÕs dormant patriotism, because as Bharat says, ÒMusic works in India -- it works internationally also.Ó

Bharat points out that the men and women who fought in the freedom struggle will not be around in the next 10 or 15 years: “ In fact, many of them are lost to us already. The present generation has no idea how hard-won freedom was; all that they know is from dry history books or faded footage from the Film Division of India. We wanted to make the concept of patriotism exciting for them.”

For giving voice to this classic song, Bharat turned to a surprising choice -- music director A.R. Rahman, who has rarely sung except on some of the music tracks for films. He is better known as the King of Pop, as the composer of such mega-film bits as “RojaÓ and ÒBombay.Ó His 1995 soundtrack for ÒBombayÓ sold over 5 million units.

Rahman has a talent for merging rock, jazz, Bach, Mozart and Carnatic music and producing music which goes on in your head long after the song is over. ÒRahman and I were schoolmates and he has done over 150 commercials for me, so ours is a long term relationship,Ó says Bharat. ÒWhen I discussed this concept with him, it was also an opportunity for him to move away from feature film music and to create a new idea. I got him to believe he has to become a singer. Kanika worked with him for about a year because he doesn’t speak Hindi.”

The Bharats wanted the album to have a universal appeal so they collaborated with international artists and got Sony Music International to handle the distribution. The concept for the project revolved around three key songs coinciding with the three colors of the flag to create an album called Vande Matram. The first song “Maa Tujhe Salaam” represents saffron for the pride and passion of Indians for their country.

Says Bharat: “If you look at the music video, we have taken a lot of real people of India and created a human chain of them. We have shown children -- that everyone shared the passions of the tricolor. It is to say 950 million are represented by one flag, and they share one voice which is Vande Matram. ItÕs a very contemporary approach.Ó

The second song, “Missing Bapu” represents white and is a dedication to the Father of the Nation. According to Bharat, “What we’ve done is we have taken the traditional song in Sanskrit and a female choir and made it a collaborative effort with Dominique Miller, who is an acoustic guitar player in London. Everyone has heard the traditional Vande Matram, it’s played in the morning on All India Radio and is the prayer in schools, and we wanted to give it some elements to make it more exciting.”

“Gurus of Peace,” the third song corresponds to green, and is a global statement from India to the world: “We call ourselves the largest democracy in the world, we have given Mahatma Gandhi to the world, we have given the philosophy of Ahimsa to the world. Lot of people talk about world peace -- so I thought let’s talk about world peace in the land of ahimsa, and create a new sound from the sub-continent. It is the 50th year of independence for both India and Pakistan, so we decided to merge the talents of the two countries. I got A. R. Rahman and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to perform together in a song for world peace from the sub-continent, with children from different parts of the world joining in.Ó

Just producing a soul-and-foot tapping song was not enough for the Bharats. As he points out, “A lot of musicians can get together and create a song -- thatÕs not a big deal nowadays. But to make this concept of world peace a big idea, we decided to involve all the living Nobel Peace Prize winners in this project.Ó

The Bharats got in touch with all of them, and made a ten-part documentary with them, asking them to share their philosophy of peace in today’s world. At the end of the interviews, each Nobel prize winner said “Vande Mataram!” -- giving it a universal relevancy. As Bharat explains, ÒSince Vande Mataram means ‘Salutations to your motherland’ in Sanskrit, Arafat could salute his country, and Gorbachev his country so it’s really a global idea.”

The Vande Mataram campaign also included a huge painting done in the three colors of the flag. It was created before they even wrote the music and they had an artist Thotta Tharani.

Says Bharat: “I got all the world leaders to sign the painting as a gesture of commitment. It was all just so unique that everyone got excited. When we showed it to Dalai Lama, he said what an idea! Shimon Peres spent two days with us.Ó Indeed all the Nobel Prize winners from Arafat to Lech Walesa got involved.

Says Bharat: “It was not difficult to organize. They all have great respect for India and because this project reflects the thought of ahimsa, it became a very natural participation for all these world leaders.”

Having got the music, the world leaders and Sony as the distributors, the Bharats then decided to get the people who would matter in India for the next 50 years involved in one-minute short films, sharing their dreams and their philosophy. Their selection embraced the whole gamut of people across India -- scientists, activists, sports stars, young achievers, villagers, children and more.

The films would also be a celebration of India’s dance, art and natural beauty and all these features are woven into the videos. Says Bharat: “So it’s a tribute coming through classical dance and natural forms. We even had tribal dancers. Usually it’s very easy to pick up all the famous people, but to travel to remote villages to pick up tribal dancers and folk dancers and bringing them into the mainstream is much more exciting.Ó

“In our 300 films we are showing the landscape of India through its dance, its art, its people, its music and all the natural forms available. Important monuments where history took place, Sabarmati Ashram, Jallianwalla Bagh, Naokali in Bangladesh, Varga. Except for those whose families were involved with the freedom movement who know -- all other people donÕt know. Children in school often don’t know where is Sabarmati Ashram. We have pictured all this in a contemporary fashion with music.” The music has been packaged in a way that it can be shown in any media.

How did Bharat arrange the funding for this massive project? He says in the first year on one came forward; the government encouraged the project, but all its funding for anniversary celebrations had already been allocated. So Bharat turned to the corporations and it was the multinationals like Colgate which responded first. There was a cry of economic sell-out from some quarters and Bharat had to go to parliament to explain the situation. Since then Indian companies and the public sector have also participated in the campaign. The project has cost several crore rupees, filming all over the world.

Says Bharat, “It’s just the beginning. We have a big responsibility now to strengthen this idea. We worked for six months to see that it’s a national responsibility and to get all channels to participate. Usually only one channel runs a film but we got Sony, Zee TV, Doordarshan, StarTV, Sun TV to participate at the same time. Every half hour there will be these one minute films on TV.Ó

Is there any discomfort that a national song is being used for commercial purposes? Says Bharat: “Only the cassettes are a commercial venture but the rest is totally an operational cost of a non-profit way of producing these films and putting them on the air. After all, how do you create excitement -- you have to take certain marketing steps to make the idea better. Sony will promote Vande Mataram in so many counties, they have pumped in money to support this in a very big way.”

Normally a marketing guy would sell soap or toothpaste -- so isn’t it exciting to be involved in selling nationalism to people, awakening it in children who didn’t even know what it means? Bharat agrees: “We have covered so many unknown freedom fighters in this project that itÕs given a respect for elderly people, so itÕs helped a lot.Ó

With the young generation it may be old-fashioned to show patriotism, but now suddenly itÕs become trendy to be patriotic. Says Bharat: ÒIn school, a lot of ideas are forced, so students tend to move away. If you package it excitingly, they adapt to it naturally. We have to use all the avenues open to us to bring out our history and culture.

“So our concept is not just to celebrate 50 years of Indian independence, it’s just the starting point for the next 50 years. Vande Mataram is the catalyst for people to think about India in a big way.Ó

ng for a dream. He is not sure. Maybe he is living it right now.