Trace how Vande Mataram changed from a literary work to a national symbol, and explain the controversies around its different versions.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote Vande Mataram around 1875 [1]. Over the next 75 years it went from a Bengali poem to the war-cry of the freedom struggle and then to India's National Song. Today the dispute is not over the song itself but over which version the State promotes.

From literary work to national symbol

• Literary origin: Bankim first wrote it as a separate poem. In 1882 he placed it in his novel Anandamath, where rebel monks sing it as a hymn [1].
• Mass mobilisation: During the Swadeshi movement (1905) it became the slogan of protests against the Partition of Bengal.
• Political settlement: In 1937 the Congress Working Committee decided that only the first two stanzas would be sung at national gatherings [2].
• Constitutional recognition: On 24 January 1950, Rajendra Prasad declared that it would have "equal status" with Jana Gana Mana [3].
• Statutory protection: The 2026 amendment to the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 made it an offence to deliberately prevent the singing of the National Song, with jail of up to three years [4].

Controversies over its versions

• Religious imagery: The first two stanzas only praise the land. The later stanzas compare the motherland to Hindu goddesses. Objections from sections of Muslim opinion to these lines led to the 1937 cut.
• Competing readings of 1937: The government, in Parliament in 2025, called the decision a compromise that broke the song into pieces [2]. Others see it as fairly meeting real grievances.
• Return to six stanzas: Two government orders, of 28 January and 9 July, made the six-stanza version compulsory. Before this, governments had sung the two-stanza version for about 79 years [5].
• Supreme Court challenge: Petitioner B.D. Borkar, from the Scheduled Caste (SC) Buddhist community, calls the full version a "sectarian prayer". The plea says it violates freedom of religion and that the 2026 amendment brings criminal law into play [5][4].
• Constitutional questions: Article 25 protects freedom of conscience. Bijoe Emmanuel (1986) protected students who stood respectfully during the anthem but did not sing it. Article 51A(a) names only the Flag and the Anthem.

Vande Mataram became a national symbol through a consensus built around its inclusive opening stanzas. The best way forward is to honour the song without compelling anyone to sing it, keeping the two-stanza practice the Republic inherited. That would respect the secularism in the Preamble and the freedom of conscience in Article 25, so the song keeps uniting people.