New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha Wednesday passed the Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Bill, 2026, amid a heated debate, with the Opposition questioning the intent of the Bill and maintaining that reverence to the national song doesn’t come through legislation. The government said that opposing the national song Vande Mataram amounts to boosting the morale of the “Bharat tere tukde honge gang”.
The Act penalises insults to the national flag, the Constitution of India, and the national anthem. The Bill would give Vande Mataram the same statutory protection as the national anthem. The Bill was discussed amid Opposition staging protest and shouting slogans demanding a response from Union Home Minister Amit Shah over police action against protesters last week. Opposition members later staged a walkout in the middle of the debate.
During the debate on the Bill, RJD MP Prof Manoj Kumar Jha asked, “I am seeing for the first time that my national anthem and national song are being pitted against each other. Subhash Babu is being pitted against Nehru ji. What are we doing?”
He asserted that “reverence cannot be legislated”, and asked whether the slogan, “Vande Mataram. Kar le thodi sharam” will be considered an insult. Saying that during his student days, they used to raise this slogan, he asserted that he was asking this question on behalf of the youth of the country.
BJP MP Dr Radha Mohan Das Agrawal alleged that Vande Mataram was being insulted for the past 123 years, and claimed that the national song was never discussed in the Constituent Assembly. He alleged that “not just today’s Congress, but even the Congress of the time of Independence struggle” consistently insulted the national song.
Quoting several revolutionaries who sang Vande Mataram, he said, “Because revolutionaries drew inspiration from this song, members of the Congress felt inferior because of the song, they used to feel a sense of their own smallness.”
Agrawal referred to the 1923 Kakinada session of the Congress, whose president Muhammad Ali Jauhar protested when the singer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar rose to render the song.
He said, “In the 1923 session of the Indian National Congress, when the then-Congress president insulted Vande Mataram and said the song won’t be sung in the Congress session, they didn’t have the courage to remove that president, that Muslim League’s dalal, that anti-Indian who allowed Afghan attack on India, from the Congress…They laid the foundation for the Partition during the Non-Cooperation Movement.”
AAP MP Sanjay Singh said it was “laughable that such a bill is being brought by a party which didn’t have the Indian flag at the RSS headquarters for 52 years”.
“Today, people are talking about bringing in a strict law against (insult of) Vande Mataram. There is a patrika called Organiser which wrote in 1949 that the national anthem is an item of entertainment. You insulted that national anthem, there should be proceedings against such organisations, who insulted the national anthem and the national flag,” Singh added.
The AAP MP asked, “Why don’t you unfurl the flag at Sangh Shakhas?”, urging for a Bill for proceedings against people who have insulted the national flag and the national anthem as well.
In his response, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said the Bill was not just a legislative change but a “collective commitment to the soul of India, national consciousness, cultural heritage, and the ideals of the freedom struggle”.
“I don’t know why these 1-2 people are opposed to Vande Mataram. I don’t understand what opposition the Congress has towards Vande Mataram,” he added.
Nityanand Rai further said that the original 1971 law punishes insults to the national flag, the Constitution, and the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana. The amendment, he said, ensures the same respect and punishment for insult of the national song as well.
Rai then asserted, “Being against Vande Mataram means that the Congress always adopts the policy of polarisation to undermine the pride of the nation…Why is the Opposition against Vande Mataram? Opposing the Vande Mataram amounts to boosting the morale of ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’ gang. But the country’s youth, farmers, women and workers, won’t tolerate the slogan, Bharat tere tukde honge. Such people will be taught a lesson.”
He said that Swami Vivekananda had made a prediction that the 21st century would be India’s. “Swami Vivekananda’s childhood name was Narendra. One Narendra made a prediction, and it is being fulfilled by the world’s most popular leader, the messiah of the poor, the bringer of development, honorable Shri Narendra Modi ji.”
Respect of national symbols should be above any politics, he said, asserting that this Bill isn’t against any person or ideology, and is in the interest of the nation’s dignity and “our shared national consciousness”.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)