Our National Anthem embodies the idea of India

THE National Anthem’s primacy is not a formality; it is the Republic’s deliberate choice to assert unity without erasing diversity. The Union government’s January 28 directive does not amend the anthem itself but changes its established placement in relation to the National Song, thereby unsettling a long-standing constitutional settlement.

The directive requires Vande Mataram to precede the anthem at official events. It further mandates that all six verses of the song be sung at attention before Jana Gana Mana, effectively overriding the Constituent Assembly’s decision to adopt only its first two verses for official use.

This approach disregards Article 51A of the Constitution, which accords primacy to the National Anthem. Added later as part of the Fundamental Duties, Article 51A(a) obliges citizens “to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem,” with no mention of the National Song.

The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, further extended statutory protection specifically to the anthem, prescribing penalties for acts of disrespect. Together, these constitutional and legislative choices embedded the anthem within the Republic’s legal framework in a way Vande Mataram was not intended to occupy.

That hierarchy was never incidental or informal; it was deliberately established in 1950, reflecting the Constituent Assembly’s conscious decision to define the order of national symbols and the anthem’s place in the life of the new nation. At the time of Independence, the Constituent Assembly considered three stirring compositions — Jana Gana Mana, Vande Mataram and Saare Jahan Se Achha — before narrowing the choice to the first two.

Vande Mataram, originating in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1882 novel Anandamath and set to music by Rabindranath Tagore, had been a powerful song in praise of the freedom struggle. Yet, the Assembly, mindful of the Republic’s constitutional commitment to secularism and equal citizenship, recognised a fundamental tension. While the opening stanzas evoke the motherland in broadly civic terms, the later verses present Bharat Mata as a Hindu goddess — an image that many felt was difficult to reconcile with a State pledged to equal belonging for citizens of every faith.

Accordingly, the Constituent Assembly made a distinction between the anthem and the song, assigning them different constitutional status. Significantly, this distinction had been made by none other than Rabindranath Tagore himself. In doing so, the Assembly honoured Vande Mataram’s emotive role in the freedom struggle while reserving primacy for the composition that most fully embodied the plural and inclusive imagination of the new Republic. This dual recognition acknowledged historical sentiment while assigning constitutional priority to the anthem deemed most compatible with the Republic’s secular and federal character.

On January 24, 1950, the Constituent Assembly formally adopted Jana Gana Mana as the National Anthem. Its prescribed 52-second rendition has since served as a daily reminder of India’s sovereignty, plurality and shared constitutional destiny. Composed in 1911 in Bengali as Bharoto Bhagyo Bidhata and first sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress, the anthem articulated unity not by suppressing differences but by affirming them. In a single verse, India is invoked as Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala and Banga, affirming belonging without demanding homogeneity. The Indian subject is, therefore, plural by design, capable of inhabiting multiple identities while remaining part of a shared political whole rather than being dissolved into uniformity.

This pluralist vision did not emerge in abstraction. The Constituent Assembly deliberated in the shadow of the Partition and the trauma of communal violence, at a moment when debates over whether India should adopt a formally secular or majoritarian identity were neither marginal nor theoretical.

Against that backdrop, the choice of the anthem assumed heightened significance. The decision of the Constitution’s framers was also philosophical. They chose civic nationalism over cultural majoritarianism, fully aware that national symbols can both unify and exclude. The distinction between the anthem and the song was substantive, not cosmetic. It reflected a constitutional framework premised on equal citizenship rather than majoritarian impulses or cultural homogeneity.

That constitutional choice is reflected not only in the anthem’s status but also in its form. Compared with many other national anthems, India’s choice remains distinctive. Numerous anthems foreground martial struggle or revolutionary violence, but Jana Gana Mana does not. Instead, it is structured as an invocation of unity across regions and linguistic communities. That structural character made it particularly suited to a federal democracy marked by deep and enduring diversity. The anthem’s roll call of regions distils the Constitution’s logic of unity without erasure, embodying an India that is diverse, inclusive and indivisible.

The present administrative reordering must be assessed against this constitutional background. The government guideline effects a substantive rearrangement of constitutional symbols, underscored by the sequence that places Vande Mataram first. Yet, the Constituent Assembly singled out the National Anthem for explicit priority. Administrative alteration of that order is, therefore, not a neutral exercise. It reopens the very concern that led the Assembly to limit the text of the National Song and fix the hierarchy of the two symbols in the first place.

The compromise of 1950 was born of debate, dissent and deliberation. It reflected a clear recognition that India’s strength lies in its multiplicity. To unsettle that balance through an executive order is to subordinate a foundational constitutional settlement to the proclivities of a regime and the calculus of electoral politics.

When we stand for Jana Gana Mana, we do not stand for a melody alone. We stand for the constitutional idea of India that the Republic belongs equally to all who inhabit it. To diminish that idea, whether symbolically or substantively, is to constrict the expansive vision it embodies. It reopens debates that the framers of the Constitution resolved decisively in favour of pluralism.

Jaya he, Jaya he, Jaya he, Jaya Jaya Jaya, Jaya he.