Vande Mataram and the Constitutional question of conscience

The Supreme Court’s latest hearing on Vande Mataram is not simply about whether citizens must sing a national song. It has opened a more difficult constitutional aspect: when a national symbol is standardised by the State in a form carrying explicit religious imagery, where does national conformity meet freedom of conscience?

On September 22, the Supreme Court sought the Centre’s response to Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna’s challenge to the 2026 amendment to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, and Ministry of Home Affairs directions prescribing the complete six-stanza version of Vande Mataram at specified official, ceremonial and cultural occasions. The amendment extends statutory protection to the National Song: intentionally preventing its singing or causing disturbance to an assembly engaged in singing it can attract up to three years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.

But the statute does not simply criminalise an individual for failing to sing. The constitutional difficulty arises from the interaction between the penal provision, the six-stanza protocol and the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Bijoe Emmanuel v State of Kerala. In that case, three Jehovah’s Witness children were protected after refusing to sing the National Anthem on religious grounds while standing respectfully. The Court held that genuine freedom of conscience could not be overridden by administrative instructions.

The present Bench — Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana — indicated that Bijoe Emmanuel remains the law and said it expected conscientious objectors not to face criminal consequences for declining to sing on protected religious grounds. At the same time, the Court made clear that deciding what constitutes the National Song, including its number of stanzas, is a matter for the democratic State. No final ruling has yet been made on the amendment or the six-stanza requirement.

That distinction brings the historical question back into the legal one. The final four stanzas of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s composition invoke Hindu religious imagery, including Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Krishna’s petition argues that requiring their rendition implicates Articles 14, 15(1), 19(1)(a), 21 and 25(1), particularly where religious conscience is concerned. These are arguments advanced by the petitioner, not findings of the Court.

The history is equally significant. Vande Mataram, incorporated into Anandamath, emerged from a conception of nationalism heavily shaped by Hindu religious imagery and a historical conflict between Hindu and Muslim communities. In 1937, following objections from Muslim members, the Congress Working Committee restricted public rendition at national gatherings to the first two stanzas. The contemporary debate therefore revives an old question: whether a symbol can simultaneously carry the historical memory of a freedom movement based on a specific ethos and remain equally representative in a constitutionally plural nation.

That question now has a contemporary institutional dimension. The Centre has standardised the six-stanza version, while Karnataka has separately defended the use of only the first two stanzas at state functions, creating a dispute over who determines the content and protocol of the National Song.

The Supreme Court hearing consequently sits at the intersection of national symbolism, legislative power and constitutional conscience. The issue is not whether patriotism can be demanded. It is whether the State, while defining a national symbol, can also determine the form in which every citizen must express allegiance to it — particularly when that form carries meanings that are not experienced as religiously neutral by all citizens.

Even as the Court considers that boundary, the constitutional premise of Bijoe Emmanuel remains the crucial reference point: respect for a national symbol and compelled participation in its expression are not necessarily the same constitutional act.