Two MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) directives requiring the singing of all six stanzas of the national song Vande Mataram at official state functions have been challenged in the Supreme Court. BD Borkar, an Ambedkarite and Buddhist “activist” from Nagpur, has filed the writ petition. He is also a former National President of the All India Backwards and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF).
On 28th January and 9th July, the centre issued directives mandating the singing and playing of a six-stanza version of the song on special occasions.
The plea, which was filed under Article 32, also seeks a direction that neither the singing nor the playing of the song should be made mandatory. It read, “Under the guise of providing directions on the playing and singing of an ‘official version,’ the impugned orders repealed the existing National Song and imposed a new National Song, which is the six-stanza civil war song of Anandamath with its unconstitutional, idolatrous and Islamophobic content.”
According to the appeal, India adopted a two-stanza version for almost eight decades since Independence, which was written in the early 1870s, before Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the author of Vande Mataram, wrote the novel Anandamath. It alleged that the earlier edition honours the natural landscape without mentioning any religious figure or sectarian strife.
Borker claimed, “In Anandamath, ‘matram’ means goddess. ‘Vande Mataram’ and the text of the two stanzas of the original standalone song are morphed by the plot of the novel into a violent war cry of soldiers of Goddesses and their prayer to Goddesses for victory in a religious war against fellow Indians.”
He argued that the following stanzas are a prayer to Hindu goddesses, Goddesses Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati. “In stanza 3 of this six-stanza poem, the combatant Hindu Ascetics sing, ‘To thee I call, Mother and Lord! Thou who savest, arise and save! To her I cry, who ever her foemen drove back from plain and sea and shook herself free.’ (Sri. Aurobindo’s translation). References in this stanza to ‘foemen whom the Goddess drove back from plain and sea and from whom she shook herself free’ are a reference against Indian Muslims who are identified as foes in Anandamath,” Borker accused.
He claimed that the novel is “filled with violent and hateful invective against Muslims” and charged that singing the entire six-stanza passage leads to communal divisions and undermines national unity. He contended, “By imposing sectarian prayer to particular Goddesses of one particular religion as the national song of India, the Impugned Orders convert the character of the polity of India from a secular republic to a theocracy.”
The submission claimed that the two-stanza version, which was recommended by Rabindranath Tagore in 1937 and approved by the Constituent Assembly in 1950, gained binding legal status by consistent usage since 1947. A 1937 Congress Working Committee resolution proposing that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram would be sung at national events has also been included in it.
The petition alleged that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs lacks the statutory and constitutional jurisdiction to alter the national song’s content by executive order. It declared that its orders essentially change the version of the song that has been played since Independence without citing any legal authority to do so.
The petition asserted that mandating non-Hindu citizens, including Buddhists, to sing or engage in the six-stanza version would infringe upon their constitutional rights. It added that the freedom of speech and expression encompasses the right to be quiet and refrain from singing something that goes against one’s moral convictions.
The petitioner has demanded that the aforementioned orders should be overturned. It also wants a directive prohibiting the centre from insisting on the singing or playing of the six-stanza version at official, ceremonial, educational, or other designated events.
Additionally, the petitioner has asked for a declaration that the two-stanza standalone version should be acknowledged and performed as the national song and that no citizen should be told to play or sing it or suffer any administrative, civil, or criminal repercussions for refusing to comply.
