Vande Mataram stanza row: Court weighs silence as dissent

The Supreme Court is examining whether official directions on the singing of Vande Mataram amount to compulsion, in a case that turns on how far the state can go in prescribing a national song.

A petition filed by T.M. Krishna has argued that the measures, taken together, leave citizens with little choice but to participate. The court has observed that while the state may decide what the National Song is, it cannot penalise those who object on grounds of conscience, in line with the 1986 Bijoe Emmanuel judgment.

That ruling held that no law obliges anyone to sing the National Anthem, that standing in respectful silence is not an offence, and that executive instructions without statutory backing cannot curtail fundamental rights.

The dispute traces back to the freedom struggle. In 1937, the Congress Working Committee resolved that only the first two stanzas of Bankim Chatterjee's Vande Mataram should be sung at national gatherings, since the later stanzas invoke the motherland as Hindu deities. When Jana Gana Mana was adopted as the National Anthem on January 24, 1950, India's first President, Rajendra Prasad, said Vande Mataram would be honoured equally, although the Constitution makes no mention of a national song. The two-stanza version, popularised by artistes such as Lata Mangeshkar and A.R. Rahman, allowed citizens of all faiths to take part.

In the last year or so, the BJP-led Union government has moved to change this arrangement. Since the song's 150th anniversary in 2025, it has pushed for all six stanzas to be recited. The Ministry of Home Affairs issued directions and circulars in 2026, and Parliament passed the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026 with little debate.

The amendment extends Section 3 of the 1971 Act, which punishes anyone who intentionally prevents the singing of the National Anthem or disturbs an assembly engaged in such singing, to the National Song. In itself it does not compel anyone to sing, nor does it define the National Song or its stanzas. But read alongside the Home Ministry orders, which prescribe an official version of all six stanzas, mandate mass singing at public functions and place the song before the anthem, it amounts to compulsion, the petition contends.

The court must apply Bijoe Emmanuel in full, set aside the Home Ministry's orders and make clear that silence cannot be read as disturbance, the argument goes. Reverting to the vision of the freedom generation, it is urged, would do justice to the idea of unity in diversity.