No criminal action for not singing all stanzas of Vande Mataram: SC

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it expects that a person who does not sing all six stanzas of Vande Mataram for religious reasons should not face criminal prosecution.

The statement came while a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was hearing a petition filed by Carnatic singer TM Krishna challenging the constitutional validity of the 2026 Prevention of Insults to National Honour Amendment Act, which criminalises insults to the national song. The bench asked the Union government to respond to the petition within two weeks.

The law, which received presidential assent on August 6, gives Vande Mataram the same statutory protection as the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. It states that intentionally preventing the singing of the national song, or disrupting a gathering singing it, can be punished with imprisonment of up to three years, a fine or both.

The 1971 Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act already makes insulting the national anthem, national flag or Constitution punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment, a fine or both.

In addition to the 2026 amendments to the 1971 law, Krishna has challenged directions issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in February requiring that all six stanzas of the Vande Mataram be sung at government, ceremonial and cultural occasions.

Only the first two stanzas of the national song had been played at official functions earlier. The remaining stanzas, which invoke Hindu goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, had been omitted.

Krishna contended in his petition that the Union government’s directions compel citizens to sing stanzas that “are expressly devotional, deity-invoking and non-secular”.

By mandating the singing of all six stanzas under penal sanction, the state “transforms what is unquestionably a contested historical symbol into a compelled orthodoxy”, he said.

The court said that it will examine whether the right of a person not to sing the four stanzas, as recognised in the 1986 Bijoe Emmanuel case, is protected.

“We would expect that the law of the land, as declared by this court in Bijoe Emmanuel, will govern the act of the statute,” it said. “The declaration of law in Bijoe Emmanuel has till now not been questioned.”

In the Bijoe Emmanuel judgement, the Supreme Court had ruled that expelling students for refusing to sing the national anthem while standing in respectful silence violates their fundamental rights to freedom of speech and religion.

Krishna also said that while the national anthem was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950, Vande Mataram, on the other hand, was never formally categorised as the “national song”.

Hearing the petition, Bagchi pointed out that Vande Mataram has been customarily understood to be the national song. “With the two stanzas.”

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The Hans India