Ritual, nation, and the politics of belonging

The Ministry of Home Affairs’ January 28 notification directing that all six stanzas of Vande Mataram be sung at official functions has revived an old, unresolved question in Indian public life. This is not a routine administrative guideline. It is a political decision with deep constitutional, ethical, and religious consequences. By turning a historically contested song into a compulsory State ritual, the government has crossed a boundary that the freedom movement and the makers of the Constitution had consciously chosen not to cross.

At the heart of this controversy lies a simple but serious question: can the State compel citizens to participate in a cultural and religiously coded performance in the name of patriotism? For many Indians, especially Muslims, the answer is no. This refusal is not rooted in hostility to the nation but fidelity to the Constitution, freedom of conscience, and the secular promise of the Republic. Patriotism cannot be reduced to ritual obedience, particularly when that ritual conflicts with religious belief.

The debate around Vande Mataram is not new. During the freedom struggle, leaders were aware of the song’s limits as a national symbol. The Constituent Assembly recognised that the song, composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and drawn from his novel Anandamath, carried imagery unacceptable to some. Rabindranath Tagore advised that only the first two stanzas, which describe the land without invoking religious imagery, be used, and even then voluntarily. This position reflected ethical clarity: the nation could not be built by imposing the cultural beliefs of the majority on everyone else.

By insisting on the full six-stanza recital, the present government discards this historical consensus. The later stanzas imagine the motherland as a goddess and invoke religious imagery associated with Durga and other deities. For Muslims, whose faith rests on strict monotheism and the rejection of associating partners with God, this creates a direct conflict. Islam does not permit acts resembling worship of any being other than God. A state directive forcing participation in such a ritual strikes at the freedom of religion guaranteed under Article 25.

Muslim organisations, civil rights groups, and social activists therefore opposed the guidelines. Their objection is constitutional and ethical. Muslims worship one God without partners; symbolic submission to religious imagery violates their faith.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that no individual can be compelled to sing Vande Mataram or the national anthem if it violates their conscience. A constitutional State cannot selectively forget these judgments.

To understand why this issue persists, one must return to the origins of the song. Vande Mataram comes from Anandamath, a late nineteenth-century novel written under colonial rule. The text imagines the nation as a sacred mother defended by ascetic warriors engaged in violent struggle. While celebrated as anti-colonial literature, Anandamath defines the nation through deeply Hindu symbols and excludes Muslims from its moral universe. Scholars such as Partha Chatterjee and Sumanta Banerjee have shown that Bankim’s nationalism was cultural and religious rather than civic and inclusive.

Symbols do not remain confined to history. When a song born of such imagination becomes a test of loyalty, it carries its exclusions into the present. The demand to sing Vande Mataram, especially in its complete form, becomes a way of marking who belongs fully and who does not. Muslims, Christians, and other minorities are placed in an impossible position: violate conscience or risk being labelled anti-national. This is not unity; it is moral pressure enforced by State authority.

The current push by the BJP and its ideological allies must be seen in this context. It is part of a project to redefine Indian identity in majoritarian terms. Cultural symbols become political tools, and disagreements are recast as disloyalty.

India’s Constitution was crafted precisely to prevent this outcome. Articles 19 and 25 protect freedom of expression and conscience. Jawaharlal Nehru and other framers understood that the nation could survive disagreement but not enforced uniformity. That is why Vande Mataram was never declared the national anthem or made compulsory.

The new guidelines abandon this wisdom and privilege majoritarian sentiment over minority rights.

The danger lies not only in the directive but in what it normalises. For decades, Vande Mataram has been taught and performed without serious engagement with its historical limits. Once the State mandates its performance, what was voluntary becomes obligatory, and dissent begins to look like deviance.

The January 28 notification should therefore concern all who value constitutional democracy. The question is not whether Vande Mataram is a powerful song or an important historical text. The real question is whether the State has the authority to compel belief and symbolic submission. History, law, and ethics suggest that it does not.

Resisting compulsory patriotism is not an act of disloyalty. It is a defence of a deeper idea of India. A democracy is not strengthened when everyone is
forced to sing the same song. It is strengthened when people with different beliefs can live together without fear or humiliation, under a constitution that treats them as equals.

The writer is a researcher and columnist based in Delhi and Kolkata. His work explores Muslim identity, communal politics, caste, and the politics of knowledge.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)