The Modi government wants to degrade India’s National Anthem to #2.It is to be always preceded by the entire National Song – ‘Vande Mataram’ – now. Why?What is this fear of ‘Jana Gana Mana’, written and composed by a jewel in India’s crown, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, that it is being undermined by a surreptitious Ministry of Home Affairs order via a change in ‘rules’?Trying to claim it is upgrading the National Song, ‘Vande Mataram’, is only a way of putting the National Anthem down. Vande Mataram’s beautiful and mellifluous top two stanzas are already very much respected. When this session of parliament ends, as per decades of practice, it will not be the National Anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ that would play, but the National Song’s tune that would ring out to mark the session’s closure.The 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which was fought on a very elemental plank, of the fear of Bharatiya Janata Party being against the Indian Constitution and wanting to amend it, deserves a revisit.Several MPs and ministers too, made a case for “400 paar” so they could amend the constitution. MPs, chief ministers and ministers spoke of the BJP’s desire to get over 400 seats so they could end reservations to, in the PM Modi’s words in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, so the Congress does not succeed in its purported plan to put the “Babri lock” on the temple in Ayodhya or bringing back Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.There must be no doubt that even beyond changing the constitution, the central battle against modern India being waged by the BJP brazenly now is against constitutional symbols that are critical as they embody what the nation stands for or who it belongs to – ergo all.The fear that the BJP will indeed amend the constitution in large part led to its defeat, even if it scrambled and was able to retain power in a coalition. Then Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said days after the results were out reducing the BJP to a minority in the Lok Sabha, that there was apprehension among people about amendments to the constitution and the removal of reservations after the “400 paar” pitch in the Lok Sabha elections.BJP has done its best to reimpose Hindi under NEP 2020 and subsequently in naming of bills, usage in other all-India public notifications and signage. The National Anthem not being in Hindi or Sanskrit complicates things. It is in Bengali. That must annoy the BJP no end. Especially currently, as the “infiltrator” rhetoric is led by a call to rid India of “illegals” and Bengali-speakers have been under direct attack. To get rid of the anthem may also be difficult directly, so privileging another song, whose context after stanza three reduces India to the idea of battling Muslims, is an ideal fit. In getting the controversial stanzas in, to spark a ‘Hindu versus Muslim’ tune to precede the National Anthem, must be seen as a win-win. For now.‘Jana Gana Mana’ was composed by a renowned internationalist with clear disdain for 1930s type narrow and exclusionary nationalisms like Nazism and Italian Fascism that animated Hindutva-ists and were, in the words of their own founders, M.S. Golwalkar and Hedgewar, a deep inspiration for the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. To be able to knock off the National Anthem from its pedestal would help the Sangh corrode another vitalising stream of the national movement, Tagore’s thoughts and philosophies, completelyThe giant Tagore’s song ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ is the National Anthem for Bangladesh, and this binds India with its eastern neighbour. This downgrade allows us to break that bond too in South Asia. Privileging ‘Vande Mataram’ lends a Hindutva power to a sense of a South Asian bond. Could that also be a reason for the timing of this notification? (The Ministry of Home Affairs is yet to confirm it though.)The thin veil of enhanced respect for ‘Vande Mataram’ is actually very thin. The central idea is to flex its muscle and show that a minority-government would want to tamper with the very fabric of India.The RSS has been historically uneasy with almost all our national symbols. The national flag was flown at its Nagpur headquarters for the first time only in 2002. The National Anthem being non-antagonistic and imbued with a sense of composite, positive nationalism counters the narrowness of Hindutva. T.M. Krishna has most recently brought all this upfront in his latest book We the People of India, on how each of our national symbols were birthed in the national movement which the RSS had no involvement in. The RSS subscribed to the two-nation theory, mirroring the Muslim League calling for Pakistan for Muslims, of India as a Fatherland for Hindus. These national symbols are a reminder to it of its own dark history and also of the truth about a composite India the RSS wants to both deny and subvert.It appears to be the turn of the National Anthem to be humiliated, under the garb of being more respectful to more stanzas in the National Song.The time to stand up may be now.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.