A nation’s song

Why in the News

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued directions and circulars in 2026 prescribing an official version of all six stanzas of Vande Mataram. The circulars mandate mass singing at public functions and place the song before the National Anthem. Parliament has passed the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026 with little debate, extending the penal provision of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 to the National Song. Read together, the statutory penalty and the executive circulars amount to compulsion, as a petition before the Supreme Court has argued. The contested point is whether the state’s power to decide what the National Song is extends to penalising a citizen who declines to sing it.

What is the status of Vande Mataram as the National Song?

1. Composition and standing: Vande Mataram was written by Bankim Chatterjee and became a song that stirred the freedom struggle. It was never adopted through any constitutional provision.
2. Constitutional silence: The Constitution carries no mention of a “national song”. The status rests entirely on executive and political practice.
3. The equal honour position: Jana Gana Mana was adopted as the National Anthem on 24 January 1950. India’s first President stated at the time that Vande Mataram would be “honoured equally”.
4. Statutory protection until 2026: The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 protected the National Anthem alone. The National Song was brought within its protection only by the 2026 amendment.

Why did the freedom generation confine national singing to two stanzas?

1. The 1937 resolution: The Congress Working Committee resolved in 1937 that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram should be sung at national gatherings.
2. The reason for the limit: The later stanzas invoke the motherland as Hindu deities, which places them outside what citizens of every faith can sing.
3. The inclusive result: The two stanza version allowed citizens of all faiths to partake in the song. Renditions by artistes such as Lata Mangeshkar and A.R. Rahman carried that version into popular use.
4. What national symbols are for: National symbols and anthems exist to strengthen the bond among citizens. A version modified to compel acceptance of a majoritarian reading defeats that purpose.

What do the 2026 measures change?

1. The push for six stanzas: The Union government has pushed for all six stanzas to be recited since the song’s 150th anniversary in 2025.
2. The penal provision extended: Section 3 of the 1971 Act punishes anyone who intentionally prevents the singing of the National Anthem or disturbs an assembly engaged in such singing. The 2026 amendment extends that provision to the National Song.
3. What the amendment does not do: The amendment by itself does not compel anyone to sing. It also does not define the National Song or fix its stanzas.
4. Passage without scrutiny: Parliament passed the amendment with little debate, so the extension of a penal provision to a new object was not examined in the House.

Where does compulsion arise if the Act does not command singing?

1. The gap the circulars fill: The amendment supplies a penalty without a defined object, and the circulars supply the object. Together they make a prescribed six stanza rendition the thing the penalty protects.
2. Mass singing as an obligation: A mandate to sing en masse at public functions converts participation from a choice into an expected act. Non participation becomes visible at the moment it occurs.
3. Order of precedence: Placing the National Song before the National Anthem inverts the settled order and puts the contested rendition first at every official gathering.
4. The petition’s claim: A petition before the Supreme Court argues that the combination amounts to compulsion, even though neither instrument commands singing on its own.

What does Bijoe Emmanuel (1986) settle?

1. The holding on singing: Bijoe Emmanuel (1986) held that no law obliges anyone to sing the National Anthem.
2. Silence is not an offence: The judgment held that standing in respectful silence during the Anthem is no offence.
3. Limits on executive instructions: The judgment held that executive instructions without statutory backing cannot curtail fundamental rights.
4. The Court’s current observation: The Supreme Court has observed that the state may decide what the National Song is, but cannot penalise conscientious objectors, in line with that judgment.

Challenges to the National Song directives

1. “Disturbance” left undefined: Section 3 penalises disturbing an assembly engaged in singing, and nothing in it separates obstruction from silent non participation. Eg. A citizen standing in respectful silence at a mandated mass singing remains inside the very assembly the provision protects.
   The Fix: Require a positive act of obstruction for the offence and state expressly that silence cannot be read as disturbance.
2. A definition left to circular rather than statute: The amendment does not define the National Song or fix its stanzas, so the version the penalty protects can be changed without legislative scrutiny. Eg. An official six stanza version displaced a two stanza convention that had held since 1937, without any statute being amended.
   The Fix: Set aside the executive orders and require the National Song and its stanzas to be defined by legislation.
3. A shared symbol given a majoritarian reading: The later stanzas invoke the motherland as Hindu deities, so a compulsory full rendition asks citizens of other faiths to sing a religious affirmation. Eg. The 1937 confinement to two stanzas was adopted for exactly that reason.
   The Fix: Restore the two stanza rendition as the official version for official gatherings.
4. Precedence reordered without a stated ground: Placing the National Song before the National Anthem lowers the Anthem’s settled primacy, and no reason accompanies the change. Eg. The Anthem’s status comes from its adoption on 24 January 1950, while the Song’s rests on practice alone.
   The Fix: Retain the National Anthem’s precedence at official functions and confine the Song to the position practice has given it.

Conclusion

A national symbol functions as a symbol only while participation in it is voluntary. A penalty attached to a prescribed rendition converts the symbol into a compliance test, and a compliance test measures obedience rather than solidarity. The question now before the Supreme Court is narrower than the debate around it: whether a penal provision aimed at obstruction can be read to reach a citizen who simply stays silent. What follows from the Court’s answer is whether an executive circular can define the object of a criminal penalty at all.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2014, GS2, 12 marks] What do you understand by the concept “freedom of speech and expression”? Does it cover hate speech also? Why do the films in India stand on a slightly different plane from other forms of expression? Discuss.”