A reflection on two songs and their nationalisms - The HinduUpdated - October 02, 2026 01:02 am ISTParliament amended the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, to bring the National Song within the ambit of criminal law for the first time. FIle. | Photo Credit: S. SudarshanWhile it is customary to garland Gandhiji on his birthday, this year, let us listen to him instead and to the song he lived by. At a time when the Republic has spent 10 months legislating about another song, the contrast will be a lesson in what nationalism is, and what it is not.The song the Republic legislated about is Vande Mataram. In January 2026, the Union Home Ministry directed that all six stanzas of the National Song be performed at official functions, with everyone standing at attention. In July, a second order made the six-stanza text the “official version” and placed the Song before the Anthem. Parliament amended the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, to bring the National Song within the ambit of criminal law for the first time. To intentionally prevent its singing, or to disturb an assembly engaged in singing it, now invites imprisonment of up to three years.On September 22, the Supreme Court heard the Carnatic musician and author, T.M. Krishna’s challenge to the law and the orders. It did not decide the case. It asked the Union government to reply. However, Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that while the state may decide whether the Song has two stanzas or six, Bijoe Emmanuel (the SC judgment which upholds the right to religious freedom, constitutional tolerance and silent objection) still governs. A conscientious objector, to one stanza or all, should face no criminal consequences if she/he respectfully stood but didn’t sing. Justice Bagchi’s view is not yet a judgment but one wishes it should be.Also read: Vande Mataram and the right to dissentThe same morning, the Solicitor General answered the plea for national consensus by stating that law-making “cannot follow the ideas of Naxalites.” This author, in court for another matter, rose to say that “to think, is not to be a Naxalite.”The episode matters only because it sums up the two nationalisms discussed here: one answers an argument, the other renames the arguer.Vande MataramLet us take a closer look at the six stanzas of the Song; Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote the first two around 1875, reportedly as a filler for his journal. They are a hymn to a landscape, richly watered, bountiful, and cool with southern breezes. Any Indian of any faith can sing these stanzas about her nation.The later stanzas came with his novel Anandamath, and they name names. The motherland becomes Durga with her 10 weapons, Lakshmi, and Saraswati. It is two songs stitched together, and the divide has run through our politics since 1905, when the Partition of Bengal made its opening words the war cry of Swadeshi.The freedom movement resolved the problem sharply. In October 1937, on a resolution moved by Rajendra Prasad and seconded by Vallabhbhai Patel, the Congress Working Committee acknowledged the validity of Muslim and others’ objections to the later stanzas and adopted the first two alone for national gatherings.Rabindranath Tagore, who had first set the song to music, blessed the change. He loved the opening stanzas and disowned the theology that followed.On January 24, 1950, India’s first President Rajendra Prasad announced that Jana Gana Mana would be the National Anthem and that Vande Mataram would be “honoured equally”. Honour is not an obligation and for 55 years, the law protected the Flag, the Constitution and the Anthem, and deliberately left the Song outside the penal net. Love for the song was invited and obedience was never demanded.Nor was the two-stanza settlement any insult to Bankim. The Bhagavad Gita is seven hundred verses from a Mahabharata of a hundred thousand. Our national anthem is the first of Tagore’s five stanzas. Fitting a work to a public purpose is homage and not a denigration.This settlement worked. In 1997, A.R. Rahman, born a Hindu and a convert to Islam, reimagined Vande Mataram as Maa Tujhe Salaam. Ask anyone under 40 to sing Vande Mataram and you will hear Rahman.It is this settlement of 1937, of 1950, and of 1997 that the current orders and statutes have reopened, and that the Supreme Court has now, rightly, handed back to the state and to us.The other songFive centuries before Bankim, Narsinh Mehta of Junagadh was excommunicated by his own caste for singing among ‘untouchables’.He composed Vaishnava jana to tene kahiye, je peed parai jaane re (Call that one alone a man of God, who knows another’s pain as his own). The song has no map, no enemy, no throne. It audits a human being: one who serves without pride, bows to all and disparages none, keeps word, deed and thought in one line, looks on all with an equal eye, tells no lie, touches no wealth that is not his, honours every woman, and has put away deceit, lust and anger.Read that against the Constitution and you will find that Narsinh drafted a version of the Preamble early and set it to music.Feeling another’s pain is fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual. Bowing to all is Article 14. The equal eye is our secularism and the hand that refuses another’s wealth is the law of probity. The tongue that will not lie is the informed citizen of Article 51A.Gandhi carried it from Sabarmati to his last prayer meeting, beside the Koran and Christian hymns, and in a hundred years no one has felt excluded by it.ALSO WATCH Watch: Amit Shah attacks Sonia Gandhi over ‘Vande Mataram’ rowVande Mataram tests your posture; Vaishnava Janato tests your conduct.Here, then, are two songs and two nationalisms. One venerates the soil and asks the citizen to bow. The other civilises the soul and asks citizens to be worthy. One now comes with a sub-inspector attached. The other has never needed one.A modest proposalSo, on Gandhi Jayanti, here’s a proposal. We have a National Anthem, protected by law, and a National Song, honoured by usage. Let the Republic recognise Vaishnava Janato as our National Prayer, through the gentle method used in 1950, and not the muscular method of 2026. No order, no penalty, no compulsory standing. Only recognition and no mandatory requirement. Let it be sung, by those who wish, where the National Song is sung.Let schoolchildren learn its meaning in every language. A prayer compelled is no prayer at all. That is the point.Bankim’s third stanza counted “sapta koti kantha” — the seven crore throats from his motherland, an undivided Bengal. In 1905, Sarala Devi sang it as thirty crore, and the motherland became India. Today we are 140 crore, and every crore was added by inclusion; none by compulsion.A choir of 1.4 billion cannot be conducted with a lathi (stick). In a symphony that size, the conductor’s only instrument is the willingness of the singers, won by making everyone feel the song is theirs. Inclusion is not a concession to the fastidious. It is the better tune.The Constitution does not demand that we all worship the same way. It demands that we remain, all 140 crore of us, equal citizens. We are better off not insisting that everyone sing our song, and instead praying that everyone becomes a Vaishnava jana in citizenship.Standing at attention takes 90 seconds. Feeling peed parai (pain of others) takes a lifetime and it, not the standing, is what builds a nation.Sanjay Hegde is Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court of IndiaPublished - October 02, 2026 12:54 am ISTSign in to unlock member-only benefits!Access 10 free stories every monthSave stories to read laterAccess to comment on every storySign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single clickGet notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products${ ind + 1 } ${ device }Last active - ${ la }