A view of the Kartavya Path amid rehearsals for the 2026 Republic Day Parade, in New Delhi, on January 21, 2026. | Photo credit: ANI
This year’s Republic Day parade will include a display celebrating 150 years of Vande Mataram, featuring a rolling tractor with the complete manuscript of the song, including all six original stanzas, not just the two later adopted as India’s national song.
It follows a heated debate on Vande Mataram in Parliament last month, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused the Congress of “betraying” and “sabotaging” the song by removing “crucial verses”, sowing seeds to divide the country. A 1937 Congress Working Committee passed a resolution “recognizing the validity of objections raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the song” and decided that only the first two stanzas would be adopted as the national song.
The culture ministry’s tableau will also feature Vande Mataram sung by youngsters, inspired by the Vishnupant Pagnis version, which changes the order of the song to emphasize the excluded stanzas. “The recording in Raag Sarang became an act of artistic resistance against colonial censorship,” says a concept note shared by the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA), which curated the painting.
The tractor in the painting will be followed by folk artists from the four directions of India who embody cultural pluralism, IGNCA member secretary Sachidanand Joshi said.
Band performance
According to an earlier government statement, “150 years of Vande Mataram” is the theme of the Republic Parade 2026. A series of paintings created by Tejendra Kumar Mitra in 1923, illustrating the verses of Vande Mataram, will be displayed as carvers along the Kartavya Path during the parade.
The Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, Indian Coast Guard and other central armed forces will organize pan-Indian band performances on the theme till January 26.
The native house and birthplace of the song writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in Naihati district of West Bengal will also be the venue for the performance.
Published – 21 Jan 2026 21:26 IST
