Supreme Court seeks government response on pleas challenging Vande Mataram as a ‘divisive religious war song’

Spectators seen covered with cloth amid rainfall and coldest day in front of the Vande Mataram hoarding, in New Delhi. FIle | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) sought a response from the Union government on two separate petitions filed by a Phule-Ambedkarite and a former Kerala bureaucrat challenging government orders imposing the six-stanza Vande Mataram on the people.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant issued notice to the Centre on petitions filed by B.D. Borkar and former IAS officer Balakrishnan Sathyabhama Mavoji, both of whom have termed the six-stanza Vande Mataram a ‘divisive religious war song’ and a step towards theocracy.

The petitions argued that government orders had imposed a “sectarian prayer to particular goddesses of one particular religion as the National Song” which violated fundamental rights of religion and attracted the criminal law.

The petitions, represented by jurist and advocate Mohan Gopal, said a State compulsion expressed through two successive government orders on January 28 and July 9 would lead to the “unstated but undeniable consequence of irreversibly deepening communal division and conflict in India by outraging the religious and spiritual feelings of minority religions”.

Mr. Borkar has argued that the six-stanza version introduced by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in his novel ‘Anandamath’ would promote enmity and conflict between different communities by advancing the supremacy of a dominant community. The fabric of unity and harmony would be mutilated forever, he has said.

The plea said for 79 years, from independence until the issuance of these orders in 2026, the Union and State governments, public institutions and other groups had peaceably played and sung the “non-Anandamath” two-stanza Vande Mataram authored by Bankim Chatterjee in the early 1870s.

“This non-theistic song lauds the natural beauty of Mother Earth, describing the nation as a landscape and pays tribute to a non-deified motherland. The song was treated in this period as the National Song even though not officially declared so,” the petition has said.

It said the stand-alone, two-stanza paean to the beauty of Mother Earth was authored by Chatterjee, and pre-dated and was independent of the subsequent six-stanza version found in the novel.

The petition has sought the court to intervene to quash the two orders, and stop any manner of compelling citizens, particularly school children, from singing or playing the six-stanza Vande Mataram. It said the court could direct that the two-stanza, standalone version of ‘Vande Mataram’ alone be recognised, treated, performed and sung as the National Song.

On September 2, the apex court had orally observed that a democratically-elected government cannot compel conscientious objectors to sing or play one or all the stanzas of the ‘Vande Mataram’ under the threat of penal action.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India, while hearing a petition filed by author and Carnatic vocalist T.M. Krishna, said that while a democratically-elected state could decide the length of the National Song, it cannot, at any cost, compel citizens to recite them.

The court had referred to its 1986 judgment in Bijoe Emmanuel versus State of Kerala, which had upheld the right to religious freedom, constitutional tolerance and silent objection.

Published - October 27, 2026 01:34 pm IST