When I was in school, yoga was becoming popular as an exercise everywhere. My school decided to bring it into PE class, as pure fitness. I did it like everyone else, no questions asked.
When I went home and told my father, a theologian, what we’d been doing, he explained what yoga actually was – not just stretching and exercise, but that it has a spiritual practice that is rooted in another faith, with postures and breathing that were forms of worship long before they were forms of exercise. Once I understood that, I couldn’t in good conscience keep doing it as if it were just squats and stretches. While I completely recognise that many people find immense physical and mental benefit in yoga, I personally made a decision to stop. Ultimately it came down to aligning my daily routines with my personal spiritual and religious convictions
My parents and a few other Christian parents who felt strongly about it spoke to the principal and we were exempted from doing it. I remember being grateful for that. But I also remember what came with it – standing at the side while everyone else moved through the routine, the sideways glances, the questions from everyone asking why I was making such a big deal out of an exercise. Nobody punished me. But nobody had to. Standing out was punishment enough to make most kids just go along next time.
I think about that memory a lot right now, watching a very similar pressure building around a national song.
On 28 January this year, the Union Home Ministry signed a protocol on how India’s national song, Vande Mataram, should be performed at official events. It was made public on 6 February. For the first time since 1950, the government named one ‘official’ version of the song and said it must be the complete six-stanza version, not just the two stanzas most Indians grew up singing. This full version must now be sung at events like the president’s arrival, flag-hoisting ceremonies and governors’ functions. When both the national anthem (Jana Gana Mana) and Vande Mataram are performed together, Vande Mataram must go first, and everyone present must stand to attention. Schools are advised to begin their day with it.
Several states have made it mandatory in schools. The Madhya Pradesh, Tripura and West Bengal governments have all ordered all six stanzas to be sung compulsorily in schools, madrasas and official programmes.
The first two stanzas of the song, which most Indians know, describe the country through its rivers, fields, moonlit nights and blooming trees. The other four stanzas, which most have genuinely never heard, compare the nation to various goddesses: as fierce as goddess Durga, as wealthy as goddess Lakshmi, and as wise as goddess Saraswati. That is where the trouble starts.
| Tvam hi Durga dasha-praharana-dharini, Kamala kamala-dala-viharini, Vani vidya-dayini, Namami tvam namami kamalam, Amalam atulam, Sujalam suphalam Mataram! Vande Mataram. | You are Durga, the wielder of ten weapons; You are Kamala (Lakshmi), who dwells upon the lotus petals; You are Vani (Saraswati), the giver of knowledge. I bow to you, I bow to you, O pure and incomparable Mother. You are rich in pure waters and abundant in fruitful harvests. I salute you, Mother. |
Stanza 5/Verse 4 of the Vande Mataram.
Freedom of religion is not just the right to worship. It also includes the freedom not to be forced into words or acts of worship you don’t believe in – in other words, freedom of conscience, which is protected under Article 25 of the Indian Constitution.
For many Muslims, whose faith is that there is only one god, and for many Christians as well, singing verses that praise the country as a Hindu goddess isn’t a small ask. It can feel like being forced into someone else’s religious practice or expression.
This is exactly the discomfort that Muslim and Christian communities voiced before independence. In October 1937 the Indian National Congress Working Committee under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru decided to drop the last four stanzas from public use. It was a deliberate act of accommodation, a way to let the country sing about loving the motherland without asking any community to affirm a theology that isn’t theirs. Leaders sought a unifying national song that respected the sentiments of all religious groups during the freedom movement.
Now, supporters of the new rule argue that Vande Mataram, written in 1875 by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay as an anti-colonial rallying cry, describes the motherland as a goddess, as a form of poetic imagery, not a demand that anyone actually worship her.
But it doesn’t fully settle the question. Even if the poem wasn’t written to be religious, asking children today, in mixed classrooms, under a government circular, to sing words that invoke specific Hindu goddesses can still feel like religious pressure.
The directive has received fresh pushback from civil society. On 13 August the Nagaland Baptist Church Council, representing over 700,000 members, said it would oppose any directive making the song compulsory, especially for Christians, warning that ‘patriotism must never be reduced to compulsory conformity. In response, the Nagaland Chief Minister has proposed a committee to review it.
In Mizoram, the state’s largest student body, the Mizo Zirlai Pawl, firmly opposed compulsory singing beyond the first two stanzas, and the Chief Minister has said Mizoram will accept only those two stanzas. The Kerala government has also accepted only two stanzas.
Opposition parties nationally have accused the government of using the 150th anniversary of the song this year to create political division rather than genuine unity. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has refused to entertain challenges to the circular as yet, claiming that any such challenge would be premature as it is purely advisory.
Furthermore, on 11 August, President Droupadi Murmu gave assent to an amendment that gives Vande Mataram the exact same criminal protection as the national anthem, which means that intentionally disrupting its singing is now punishable by up to three years in prison.
While there is no specified punishment for not singing it or staying silent while it’s sung, there is genuine doubt over what rights exactly are protected.
While hearing a public interest litigation against West Bengal’s order on 4 August, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court made a remark that went viral, ‘heavens will not fall’ if the song is sung, sarcastically implying that one’s refusal to say words that go against their conscience is an overreaction.
But is it? More importantly, the pattern is worth noticing: this went from a voluntary-sounding advisory in February, to state-level mandates by May, to a vague criminal law with prison time by August. This is the wider pattern that concerns many minority rights observers, a series of seemingly harmless steps, cultural at first, then administrative, now legal, each justified as preserving heritage, unity, or correcting a historical injustice. But what it does gradually is shrink the space in which religious minorities can take part in public life without affirming the majority’s religious language.
By CSW’s India Researcher, who is based in the country