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Informist, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – Observing that its earlier ruling protecting people who choose not to sing the national anthem still holds, the Supreme Court Tuesday said any person who does not recite one or all stanzas of 'Vande Mataram' should not face criminal prosecution. The apex court issued a notice to the government on a petition challenging the constitutional validity of recent amendments made to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, that made intentionally preventing the singing of 'Vande Mataram' or disrupting an assembly engaged in its singing punishable with up to three years in jail.   

 

The apex court was hearing a plea by Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna, challenging Section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act. Krishna has also challenged the Ministry of Home Affairs' directions that require the complete six-stanza version of Vande Mataram to be sung at specified government, ceremonial and cultural occasions.

 

The government's directions are beyond regulating protocol and the amendment effectively compels citizens to participate in singing the last four stanzas, the petitioner said. The stanzas contain references to Hindu deities, including Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. The government's action compels a ceremony of assent to a symbol whose last four stanzas are expressly devotional, deity-invoking and non-secular, the petitioner said.

 

The government's move was violative of fundamental rights under the right to equality, protection against discrimination, freedom of speech and expression, life and personal liberty, and freedom of conscience and religion. The petitioners referred to the apex court's 1986 verdict through which it had protected schoolchildren who stood up respectfully during the National Anthem but did not sing it because of their religious beliefs.

 

The first two stanzas were originally composed as a separate patriotic lyric, while the remaining four were added when the song was incorporated into Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Anandamath, the petitioner said. The later stanzas are both religiously and musically distinct from the first two, the petitioner said. 

 

A row over Vande Mataram had erupted during Independence Day celebrations at the All India Congress Committee headquarters in New Delhi, when there were reports of Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Sonia Gandhi gesturing to stop the full rendition of the National Song. The Bharatiya Janata Party had accused the Congress of vote-bank appeasement and insulting the national song, while the Congress had defended its practice of restricting the song to the first two stanzas based on a historic 1937 party resolution.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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