Can criminal sanction be an appropriate instrument to enforce patriotic conduct? Examine in the context of recent legislative changes concerning the National Song.

The Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026 substituted Section 3 to extend penal protection to the National Song, Vande Mataram, alongside the National Anthem [1]. Criminal law can legitimately shield national symbols from wilful disruption, but it cannot manufacture the inner allegiance that patriotism presumes.

The case for penal protection

• Parity of symbols: the 1971 Act protected the Flag, Constitution and Anthem, while the Song had none, despite Dr Rajendra Prasad's Constituent Assembly statement of 24 January 1950 according it equal honour [2].
• Conduct, not belief: the amended Section 3 punishes intentionally preventing singing or disturbing an assembly that is singing — i.e. heckling, not quiet abstention [1].
• Secularism intact: religious imagery alone does not make a symbol non-secular; the Bench itself noted that the US anthem invokes God [4].

Why penal compulsion is the wrong instrument

• Precedent: in Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala (1986) the Supreme Court held that no law obliges anyone to sing; expelling Jehovah's Witness students who stood respectfully violated Articles 19(1)(a) (which includes the right to remain silent) and 25 [3].
• Constitutional design: Article 51A(a) places respect for national symbols among non-justiciable duties — duties are meant to inspire, not to imprison.
• Disproportionality: imprisonment up to three years, with a minimum of one year on a subsequent conviction [1], is grossly excessive against conscientious silence.
• Risk of executive stretch: the MHA directive of 6 February 2026 mandating all six stanzas at official events and school assemblies [2] lets a headmaster or officer reclassify a silent child as a "disturbance" — and expulsion or prosecution bites long before a court can correct it.

Criminal sanction is therefore appropriate only against deliberate obstruction, never as a device to compel affirmation. The balance is achievable without striking the law down: the Court may read down "prevents" and "causes disturbance" to exclude respectful silence, and the executive may clarify its circular accordingly. Reverence freely offered, as the Constituent Assembly envisaged, remains the surest guarantee of national honour.