The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in West Bengal has made singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ compulsory during morning assemblies in all state-run and state-aided schools, officials said on Thursday.
“Singing of Vande Mataram during morning congregational prayers before the start of classes shall be made mandatory so that Vande Mataram is sung by all students in all schools in the state with immediate effect,” an order issued by the Education Director on Wednesday said.
“The order comes into effect immediately. District school managements will pass the order to the heads of all institutions and ensure compliance,” a state government official, requesting anonymity, said.
The move comes months after the Home Ministry’s January 28 directive mandating that all six stanzas of the song “Vande Mataram” be played or sung before the national anthem – Jana Gana Mana – on specified occasions. The matter has sparked a political and academic controversy in the poll-tastic state of West Bengal.
BJP leaders said the Centre’s move honors Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose composition since the 1870s became a rallying cry during India’s freedom movement.
However, a section of academics said that the Constituent Assembly adopted only the first two stanzas of “Vande Mataram” as a national song on January 24, 1950, as the fourth and fifth stanzas referred to the worship of idols and Goddess Durga, which they said was against the secular spirit of the Constitution.
The political debate over “Vande Mataram” intensified in West Bengal in November 2025 after the BJP and the Center launched nationwide celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of the song’s composition.
The latest order is also seen as a setback for the All India Trinamool Congress and former Prime Minister Mamata Banerjee. The previous TMC government had made it mandatory for students in state-run and state-aided schools to sing “Banglar Mati, Banglar Jol”, a song composed by Rabindranath Tagore in 1905 during protests against the partition of Bengal by the British.
The song was adopted as the official song of West Bengal by the TMC government in 2023, and was sung during the Raksha Bandhan ceremony initiated by Tagore on 16 October 1905, to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims during the Swadeshi movement against the partition ordered by the then Viceroy Lord Curzon.
The song later gained popularity in the Muslim-majority eastern part of Bengal, which became East Pakistan after partition in 1947, and later Bangladesh after the 1971 War of Liberation.
Meanwhile, ‘Vande Mataram’ was written in tribute to the motherland and later incorporated into Anandamath, which depicts saffron-clad Hindu monks fighting British troops and tax collectors during the Bengal famine of 1770.
The song eventually emerged as a symbol of the nationalist movement, and Tagore is believed to have first recited it at the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Kolkata in 1896.
None of the TMC leaders commented on the state government’s latest order till 1 pm on Thursday.
