A petition has been filed before the Supreme Court challenging two Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) orders that mandate the singing of all six stanzas of national song Vande Mataram at formal State events [BD Borkar v. Union of India].
The petition has been moved by BD Borkar, a Nagpur-based Buddhist activist, Ambedkarite scholar and civil rights advocate.
Drawing on anti-caste traditions, Borkar has contended that the MHA orders dated January 28, 2026, and July 9, 2026, illegally replace the 79-year-old practice of singing a standalone, non-theistic two-stanza poem with the full version containing explicit anti-Muslim invective.
"Under the guise of providing directions on the playing and singing of an ‘official version’... the impugned orders repealed the existing National Song... and imposed a new National Song which is the six-stanza civil war song of Anandamath with its unconstitutional idolatrous and Islamophobic content," the plea states.
As per the plea, for nearly eight decades since Independence, India peaceably adopted a standalone two-stanza version of Vande Mataram. Written in the early 1870s, this version pre-dates the novel Anandamath written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the author of Vande Mataram.
The pre-Anandamath version pays tribute to the natural landscape without invoking any religious deity or sectarian conflict, the plea adds.
However, stanzas three to six embedded within Anandamath novel transform the song into a prayer to Hindu deities - Goddesses Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati - to wage war against Muslims, who are depicted as foes in the novel.
"In Anandamath, ‘matram’ means goddess. ‘Vande Mataram’ and the text of the two-stanzas of the original standalone song are morphed by the plot of the novel into a violent war cry of soldiers of Goddesses and their prayer to Goddesses for victory in a religious war against fellow Indians," the petition states.
As regards stanza 3, the plea states:
"In the stanza 3, of this six-stanza poem, the combatant Hindu Ascetics sing, “To thee I call, Mother and Lord! Thou who savest, arise and save! To her I cry who ever her foemen drove Back from plain and sea ..And shook herself free.” (Sri. Aurobindo’stranslation). References in this stanza to foemen” who the Goddess drove back from plain and sea and from whom she shook herself free” is a reference against Indian Muslims who are identified as foes in Anandamath."
Borkar argues that forcing citizens to sing the full six-stanza text damages national fraternity and deepens communal divisions.
"By imposing sectarian prayer to particular Goddesses of one particular religion as the National Song of India, the Impugned Orders convert the character of the polity of India from a ‘secular republic’ to a ‘theocracy’," the petition asserts.
The plea further stresses that the two-stanza version acquired binding legal status through continuous practice since 1947, following the compromise advised by Rabindranath Tagore in 1937 and accepted by the Constituent Assembly in 1950.
In contrast to the narrative of Anandamath, the petition invokes Mahatma Jyotirao Phule’s vision from Sarvajanik Satya Dharma Pustak, where members of different faiths live together with love and mutual respect.
The petitioner submits that forcing non-Hindu citizens, including Buddhists, to pay obeisance to specific deities violates fundamental rights under Articles 19(1)(a), 21, 23(1), 25(1), and 29(2) of the Constitution.
The plea accordingly seeks the quashing of the MHA orders as ultra vires the Constitution and void under Article 13. It is yet to be listed before the top court.
The petition was filed through advocate Vaibhav Choudhary and drawn by Professor Mohan Gopal.