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West Bengal’s BJP govt makes Vande Mataram mandatory during school assemblies
BJP leaders said the move honoured Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose composition from the 1870s became a rallying cry during India’s freedom movement.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in West Bengal has made the singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ mandatory during morning assemblies in all state-run and state-aided schools, officials said on Thursday.
“The singing of Vande Mataram during morning assembly prayers prior to the start of classes should 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 director of education on Wednesday stated.
“The order comes into effect immediately. The district school departments will pass the order to the heads of all institutions and ensure compliance,” a state government official said, requesting anonymity.
The move comes months after the Union home ministry’s January 28 directive mandating the playing or singing of all six stanzas of ‘Vande Mataram’ before the national anthem — Jana Gana Mana — on specific occasions. The order had triggered political and academic debate in poll-bound West Bengal.
BJP leaders said the Centre’s move honoured Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, whose composition from the 1870s became a rallying cry during India’s freedom movement.
However, a section of academicians argued that the Constituent Assembly adopted only the first two stanzas of ‘Vande Mataram’ as the national song on January 24, 1950, since the fourth and fifth stanzas referred to idol worship and Goddess Durga, which they said conflicted with the secular spirit of the Constitution.
The political debate over ‘Vande Mataram’ intensified in West Bengal in November 2025 after the BJP and the Centre launched nationwide celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the song’s composition.
The latest order is also being seen as a setback for the All India Trinamool Congress and former chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The former 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, adopted as West Bengal’s official state song by the TMC government in 2023, was sung during the Raksha Bandhan ceremony initiated by Tagore on October 16, 1905, to promote unity between Hindus and Muslims during the Swadeshi movement against the partition ordered by 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 following the 1971 Liberation War.
‘Vande Mataram’, meanwhile, was written as a tribute to the motherland and later incorporated into Anandamath, which depicted saffron-clad Hindu monks fighting British forces 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.
No TMC leader had commented on the state government’s latest order till 1pm on Thursday.
