Let Vande Mataram rise above the politics of patriotism

Few songs in modern Indian history carry the emotional and political weight of Vande Mataram. Composed in the late nineteenth century, it became a battle cry of the freedom struggle and entered the national imagination long before Independence.

A hundred and fifty years on, it is back at the centre of a political storm. The Congress Working Committee has chosen to retain its 1937 position that only the first two stanzas be sung, drawing criticism from the BJP-led government, which promotes the full six-stanza composition at official functions. The row arrives in the familiar vocabulary of Indian politics: nationalism, appeasement, secularism, patriotism. Perhaps the question itself is wrong. The real issue is whether a national symbol can command respect without becoming a test of political loyalty.

Vande Mataram is more than a song by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. It is also a historical record. Its opening two stanzas earned their place in the freedom movement, sung at political gatherings and bound up with the anti-colonial cause. The later verses carry religious imagery, including invocations of Durga. Even before Independence, that difference mattered.

In 1937, the Congress resolved that the first two stanzas could serve national purposes, while portions that might unsettle some of India’s religious communities were set aside. From the vantage point of 2026, it is easy to dismiss this as appeasement, but that would flatten history. The leaders of that era were building a nationalism that had to accommodate vast religious, linguistic and cultural diversity. Their concern was less literary merit than making a national symbol acceptable to as many Indians as possible.

But history cannot be invoked selectively either. The Union government’s push for the complete version rests on a different argument: the song should be understood as Bankim wrote it, not merely through the two stanzas once chosen for public use. That position is not unreasonable. The full composition belongs to India’s literary and cultural heritage, and the later stanzas cannot be erased merely because some modern listeners find them uncomfortable. But acknowledging the whole composition is not the same as compelling everyone to embrace every line of it. That distinction has sharpened after the Supreme Court stepped in.

On September 22, the Court heard Carnatic vocalist T M Krishna’s petition challenging the constitutional validity of the 2026 amendment to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, which punishes intentionally preventing the singing of Vande Mataram or disrupting a gathering engaged in it. A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, gave the Centre two weeks to respond.

The bench indicated that someone who declines to sing all the stanzas on grounds of conscience or religion should not face criminal action. Justice Bagchi cited the 1986 Bijoe Emmanuel judgment, which protected schoolchildren who respectfully declined to sing the National Anthem on religious grounds.

The Court has not yet settled whether official renditions should be limited to two stanzas or extend to all six. The political fight goes on. But the intervention reinforces a constitutional line between respecting a national symbol and compelling an individual to express that respect in a prescribed way. A law may protect a symbol’s dignity. It cannot manufacture affection for it.

The controversy has also moved beyond party politics. In Karnataka, the Congress-led government has ordered that only the first two stanzas be sung at state government programmes, except at functions attended by the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister or Governor.

A petition in the Karnataka High Court challenges the order, arguing that the state cannot prescribe a version different from the Union’s official protocol and citing a July 9 Home Ministry communication requiring the official version whenever the National Song is performed. That raises a question weightier than the Congress-BJP quarrel: can a state government prescribe a different version of a national symbol for official functions? It concerns constitutional competence and Centre-state relations, and the courts must settle it. A party choosing what to sing at its own meeting is one thing; a government directing what must be sung at an official ceremony is another.

The government has a legitimate role in setting protocol for official ceremonies. But protocol should not become a proxy for patriotism.

The BJP should accept that the complete version need not be a litmus test of loyalty. Questioning the later stanzas does not make someone less patriotic, and a party favouring the historically accepted two-stanza version should not be casually branded anti-national. The Congress, for its part, should recognise that its 1937 position belongs to a specific historical moment. If it backs the two-stanza version today, it owes the country a historical and constitutional explanation, not just an inherited party resolution.

Indian nationalism has never been uniform. It holds many languages, faiths, literary traditions, regional memories and rival readings of the freedom struggle. The Constitution seeks to hold those differences together without demanding that everyone feel the nation in the same way.

The law can punish deliberate insult or disruption, and protocol can decide what is performed at a ceremony. Beyond that lies the democratic space where citizens argue about history, and that space is not disrespect.

There is an irony here. A song that once helped Indians challenge colonial rule is now used to divide them. Vande Mataram belongs to India’s history. Its full composition deserves preservation, its role in the freedom struggle deserves remembrance, and its dignity can rightly be protected. But its patriotic worth must not become a weapon to make Indians prove they belong. The challenge is not to decide who owns Vande Mataram, but to ensure that nobody does. India does not need another culture war over a song. It needs the confidence to hold two truths: the song is inseparable from the freedom struggle, and pluralism from the idea of India.

The writer is Deputy Director, Assam Information Centre, New Delhi; Views presented are personal.