Vande Mataram is India’s national song. It was written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee around 1875. He later included the poem in his famous Bengali novel Anandamath, published in 1882. The song was oe of the major sources of inspiration to the freedom fighters of India in the past and remains so even today. The song visualizes India as mother and gives salutation to its richness. Vande Mataram means “I bow to thee, Mother” or “Mother, I praise thee”. Going to the history of its public recitation, the first recitation of the song was rendered by Rabindranath Tagore who sang it at a meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1896. The song which was written using Sanskrit and Bangla words depicts the universal beauty of India and its natural wealth in its first two paragraphs while subsequent four paras contain explicit Hindu religious imagery and context from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath. Sri Aurobindo while describing the essence of “Vande Mataram” said that it had inherent spiritual powers capable of awakening the collective consciousness of the people because it was designed to connect people to a deeper, shared identity rather than just as a means for political protest.
Keeping in view the fact that the first two stanzas of the song focus on a geographical and aesthetic description of the motherland (rivers, fields, and winds) without explicit religious or sectarian references, freedom struggle leaders including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and great litrary icon Gurudev Ravindra Nath Tagore suggested to include only these stanzas to personify the universal imagery of mother India. In 1937, the Indian National Congress recommended adopting only the first two stanzas for national gatherings to maintain communal harmony and avoid alienating minority communities. Selecting the first two stanzas was a compromise solution in response to Muslim League leaders’ objections on the later verses of the song explicitly mentioning Hindu deities like Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati. The first two verses became India’s National Song in January 1950.
Vande Mataram is a beautiful piece of poetry in all its stanzas, but given the nature of communal diversity of Indian population it was desirable and expedient to keep only those stanzas in the national song which presented a universal imagery of mother India. However, there was a long pending demand from some segments of Indian population to keep all the stanzas of the beautiful song as National song. Eventually all the six stanzas have now been adopted as national song and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, signed into law by President Droupadi Murmu in August 2026, gave Vande Mataram, the same legal protection as the national anthem, criminalizing intentional disruptions during its rendition with up to three years in prison.
The new law has amended Section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 to include Vande Mataram alongside Jana Gana Mana. Intentionally stopping the singing of the national song or causing a disturbance in an assembly that is singing it may lead to punishments of up to three years of imprisonment, a fine, or both with the provision of a minimum jail term of one year in a second or later such convictions. In the protocol for its implementation the Home Ministry specified that when both are performed, Vande Mataram is sung before the national anthem.
Recent state protocols and commemorations have emphasized recognizing the complete six-stanza text and extending equivalent national honor and performance rules to Vande Mataram alongside the national anthem. Although Critics of the full rendition of the song argue that personifying the nation as a Hindu deity in the later verses conflicts with strict monotheistic beliefs and the secular framework of the Indian Constitution, Cultural nationalists view the complete song as an inseparable part of India’s spiritual and historical freedom struggle. There may be differences in memeories and metaphors of history, but it should never be forgotten that making of a nation is an act of seeking convergence and reconciliation of national imagination.