New Delhi: Union home minister, Amit Shah, is to introduce a Bill in the Rajya Sabha on Monday (July 20) in the Monsoon Session of parliament, to criminalise “insult to national song, Vande Mataram”.On the lines of the national anthem, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government proposes jail term of three years for anyone who prevents singing of Vande Mataram or causes disturbances to any assembly engaged in the singing.As for the need to include Vande Mataram in the 1971 Act prohibiting insults to national honours, the government states, “At the meeting of the Constituent Assembly held on the 24th January, 1950, its President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, stated that the song Vande Mataram composed by, Shri Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, which played a historic role in the Indian freedom struggle, shall be honoured equally with ‘Jana-Gana-Mana’ and shall have equal status with it.”A screengrab of The Prevention Of Insults To National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026. Photo: Provided by author.The existing 1971 Act criminalises any act of preventing singing of national anthem and also disturbing the singing of the anthem and now the government has added national song to the said provision of the statute.On March 25, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging a Union home ministry circular on singing all the stanzas of the national song at official events. While dismissing the petition, the apex court bench had said that the circular was merely an advisory and that no penalty was associated with the failure to follow its instructions.Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) MP John Brittas has written to the home minister, saying that it was only in March 2026, when “Supreme Court declined to interfere with the MHA [Ministry of Home Affair]’s January 2026 Vande Mataram protocol, observing that it imposed no legal burden or penal consequence, while expressly leaving it open for anyone to approach the Court if the protocol was ever enforced through compulsion or coercive action. Within months, the Government has brought a Bill to criminalise acts relating to Vande Mataram. Is this an attempt to achieve through legislation what could not be sustained through executive directions?“Urging withdrawal of the proposed Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The Constituent Assembly consciously refrained from placing the national song on the same constitutional and statutory footing as the national anthem. The historic national consensus accepted only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram for public national occasions. Article 51A(a) of the Constitution makes it a Fundamental Duty to respect the Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem – not the national song. Even parliament, while enacting the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, deliberately confined penal protection to the national anthem.”Further, he added that, “Seventy-six years after the constitution and fifty-five years after the 1971 Act, selectively invoking Dr. Rajendra Prasad while ignoring the constitutional settlement and legislative history is a distortion of both history and law. Patriotism cannot be manufactured through criminal law. India’s unity rests on constitutional principles, liberty of conscience and pluralism – not coercive nationalism.”