- A 17-year-old American named Gabe Merritt sang India's national anthem Jana Gana Mana
- The video of Gabe's rendition went viral on social media with nearly 60,000 views
- Disha Pansuriya shared the video, noting Gabe's special fondness for India's anthem
As India celebrates its 79th Independence Day on Friday (Aug 15), a video of an American teenager singing the national anthem has been circulating on social media, leading to warm reactions from social media users. In the now-viral video, 17-year-old Gabe Merritt can be seen performing a heartfelt rendition of Rabindranath Tagore's composition, Jana Gana Mana.
Disha Pansuriya, who lives in the US, shared the video on Instagram with the text overlay: "You feel proud when a 17-year-old American sings Indian National Anthem."
Ms Pansuriya revealed that Gabe had learned the national anthems of several countries but had a particular affinity towards the 52-second-long Indian anthem.
"Oh my god! My heart just smiled through this. He is just amazing, he knows mostly every country's national anthem, but @india is his favourite! I pray and wish he goes places with his exceptional talent!!" Ms Pansuriya captioned the video.
Watch the viral video here:
'Lots of love from India'
As of the last update, the video had garnered nearly 60,000 views and hundreds of comments, with the majority of social media users expressing astonishment at the teenager's soulful singing of the anthem.
"That was a super proud moment," said one user, while another added: "Beautiful brother. Lots of love from me and India and I invite you to come to India and visit the beautiful country."
A third commented: “This was the best thing I saw today.”
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Jana Gana Mana
Rabindranath Tagore, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, originally composed the hymn as "Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata" in Bengali on December 11, 1911. The first of the five stanzas of the song was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India as the National Anthem on 24 January 1950.
The members of the Indian delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations held in New York in 1947 gave a recording of "Jana Gana Mana" as the country's national anthem.
