For a generation that prefers its popcorn over the national anthem, the government’s move to enhance the status of the national song is laudable. Apart from injecting a fresh dose of nationalism in Generation Z—as those born between 1997 and 2012 are better known and those thereafter—this push has also helped them understand the distinction between the national anthem and national song. That the tech-savvy generation is too busy to distinguish between the two is a given. Also, these fine distinctions are of little relevance to the social media obsessed young people. Ask them and they will give a wrong answer, happily intermixing the anthem with the song, or vice-versa.
But then it is also a fact that till the Narendra Modi government took over, nationalism was neither a popular sentiment nor part of any government’s political agenda.
Neither was it part of parental teaching. In most Indian homes, the nation, its importance or one’s national duty is rarely discussed. What children in the majority of Indian homes grow up with is a sense of what they must do for their parents or immediate family. Consequently, the country is not part of the psyche of an average Indian. Hence the ignorance or indifference about the song-anthem puzzle, so to speak.
Therefore, it goes to the Modi government’s credit that it brought nationalism centre stage, even if it meant pushing it down every citizen’s throat. And this it did in many ways since assuming office.
Take, for instance, the Tiranga Yatra or Har Ghar Tiranga initiatives: the first being a march featuring a massive display of the Tricolour organized throughout the country between August 9 to August 15.
Complimenting this is the Har Ghar Tiranga initiative encouraging homes to hoist the national flag to mark India’s Independence Day.
More recently, the government took a major step by inculcating nationalism into the legal framework, so to speak. It decided to push a law to elevate the status of the national song and bring it at par with the national anthem: Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana, respectively.
For the uninitiated, Vande Mataram was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, while the national anthem was penned by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Vande Mataram, the rallying cry in India’s freedom movement, became popular after it was published in Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath. It was composed in Sanskrit, but written in Bengali script. Tagore sang it often at sessions of the Congress party as well as protest marches.
Cut to the present: The Parliament passed the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill 2026, or Vande Mataram Bill, granting the national song the same legal protection as the national anthem. Till this new law came into force, the existing Act prohibited intentionally preventing the singing of the national anthem or causing disturbance to any assembly engaged in such singing. In the event of doing so, the offence was punishable with imprisonment of up to three years, a fine or both. However, these provisions were not applicable to the national song.
In the absence of “a specific legal provision to prevent insults to the singing of Vande Mataram”, the government decided to amend the Act and include the national song within its ambit.
It was against this backdrop that Section 3 of the Act included the national song and made any act to insult it punishable.
That apart, the Union home ministry in its order said that for the first time Vande Mataram will be sung from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, this year. It also directed that all six stanzas of the national song be sung before the national anthem at all official functions.
In the first set of protocols that the ministry rolled out, it directed that the national song shall be sung at all official functions, namely the arrival of the president of India, unfurling of the national flag and speeches of governors. Until the new law took effect, it was only the national anthem that was played at official functions.
However, politics overtook nationalism with the Opposition slamming the government over this move. Alleging that it infringed upon religious freedom, they said: “it was an attempt to create polarization”. Controversy also arose on how many stanzas should actually be sung: two or all six in their entirety.
For the record, the Constituent Assembly had categorically stated that only two stanzas should be sung. As against this the government mandates that all six stanzas should be sung.
There was also a religious context to the debate in Parliament. MPs from the Muslim community charged the government with “violating the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom”. AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi was more explicit: “Vande Mataram involves worship of gods and goddesses…. When you recite Jana Gana Mana, you see a picture of the nation, but Vande Mataram is a prayer. I am a Muslim and I worship none but Allah,” he said, substantiating the religious freedom violation. There were others who attacked the BJP on grounds that the party was politicizing what is “a symbol of patriotism”.
However, there is a historical context to the political slugfest that is playing out. It was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who after reading the English translation of the national song, wrote to Subhas Chandra Bose that some parts could irritate the Muslims. Rabindra Nath Tagore himself acknowledged that Muslims could never accept Durga’s imagery as a symbol of their homeland.
For the record, criticism of Vande Mataram targets the third to the sixth stanzas. These personify the motherland as Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, all Hindu goddesses. The stanzas explicitly invoke them.
If Nehru wanted the song’s scope to be narrowed for the sake of communal harmony and limit it to the first two stanzas, Mohmmad Ali Jinnah wanted the entire text to be rejected for its religious connotations.
The first two stanzas were widely accepted while the latter part of the national song was controversial. Consequently, the later stanzas were omitted from the version that became the national song in 1937.
That notwithstanding, the Modi government decided to adopt Vande Mataram in its totality as also directed that all six stanzas should be sung rather than Nehru or the Congress’s abridged version.
Controversy apart, ushering in the national song and making singing compulsory has its advantages: one, it revives melody; two, the words hold meaning; and three, it revives the near absent spirit of nationalism and awakens the somewhat passive sentiment in the mind of an average Indian.
More importantly, it connects Generation Z to its roots. It makes them aware of the concept of nationalism and what it means: something which is sadly missing in the younger generation. Even for those who understand and relate to nationalism, Vande Mataram is somewhat alien: quite unlike the national anthem.
But there is a flip side to this: the government’s directive of making its singing compulsory particularly in official and ceremonious functions. This mandates Vande Mataram to be the opening song at all official functions, followed by the national anthem: both to be rendered in that order at the start and conclusion of the event.
On paper, this sounds fine, but in practice standing to attention for two songs to be played twice over is a bit tedious. Without undermining the sanctity or importance of the national song and anthem, the government could well rethink and rework the order and mandate that official functions begin with Vande Mataram and end with the national anthem rather than a “double shot” of both.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator
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