A Song Written on a Very Different India
Whenever Indians sing Jana Gana Mana, one particular line brings together names that belong to different parts of the subcontinent — Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala and Banga.
Today, these words can create a little confusion. Punjab and Gujarat are Indian states. Sindh is now a province of Pakistan. Maratha refers to a historical and cultural region rather than a present-day state. Dravida refers broadly to southern India; Utkala is associated with Odisha and Banga with Bengal.
So why did Rabindranath Tagore choose these names?
The answer begins more than a hundred years ago.
Tagore wrote Jana Gana Mana in 1911, when the political map of the Indian subcontinent was very different from the map we know today. India was under British rule, but the entire subcontinent was not governed in one uniform way. There were British-administered territories as well as many princely states. The poem was first publicly sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress on 27 December 1911. It was written in Bengali and was later adopted as India’s National Anthem after Independence. The Constituent Assembly formally adopted Jana Gana Mana on 24 January 1950, just two days before India became a republic. The important thing is that Tagore was not preparing a political map or writing down the names of India’s future states.
The geographical names in the poem were part of a much larger poetic idea. Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala and Banga represented different regions and cultural traditions of the country. The poem also refers to the Himalayas, the Yamuna and the Ganga and the sea.
This is why looking at the anthem using today’s political map can create confusion. For example, Rajasthan did not exist as one state in 1911. The area was made up of several princely states and was commonly associated with Rajputana. Modern Rajasthan was formed after Independence through the integration and reorganisation of these princely states.
The same principle applies to several other regions missing from the anthem. Their absence does not necessarily mean that Tagore was trying to exclude them. The anthem was a poem about the people and geographical-cultural landscape of India, not a list of every territory that would later become an Indian state. And then there is Sindh.
In 1911, Sindh was not a separate province in the way it is today. It was part of the Bombay Presidency under British rule. Yet Tagore used the name Sindh in the poem. After 1947, however, everything changed.
Partition Changed the Map, But Not the Anthem
The Partition of British India in 1947 created India and Pakistan and completely changed the political geography of the subcontinent. Sindh became part of Pakistan. For many Sindhi Hindus, Partition also meant leaving their ancestral homeland. Large numbers migrated to India, but unlike Punjab or Bengal, there was no Indian state called Sindh where the displaced community could continue living in its historic homeland.
This gives the word “Sindh” in Jana Gana Mana an emotional meaning that goes beyond geography. But there was an obvious question after Independence: If Sindh was now in Pakistan, why should the word remain in India’s National Anthem?
The question did not remain only a public discussion. It eventually reached Parliament and the courts. One of the most important legal challenges came from advocate Sanjeev Bhatnagar, who approached the Supreme Court asking for the removal of “Sindh” from the National Anthem. His argument was essentially that Sindh had become part of Pakistan after Partition and therefore should not continue to be mentioned in India’s National Anthem. The Supreme Court considered the matter in 2005.
Its answer was significant because the Court did not treat the anthem as a list of India’s present administrative boundaries. The Court explained that a National Anthem is a national symbol and a patriotic composition. It does not have to change every time the geographical or political boundaries of a country change. This is an important point.
If every word in Jana Gana Mana had to correspond to a present-day Indian state, several other words would also create problems. There is no modern Indian state called “Maratha”. There is no state called “Dravida”. “Utkala” is an older name connected with the Odisha region, while “Banga” has a long historical association with Bengal. Therefore, removing “Sindh” only because it is now outside India would create a different question: Why should one historical regional name be removed while other historical names remain?
The Court also noted that “Sindh” could not be understood only as a reference to the modern political territory. It could also refer to the Sindhi people, their cultural heritage and the ancient Sindhu/Indus civilisation and river. That brings us to the second part of the controversy. Was the word actually meant to be Sindh, the region?
Or was it Sindhu, the ancient river?
Sindh or Sindhu: What Does the Word Actually Mean?
The spelling question makes the debate more interesting. In the official Hindi version of the National Anthem, the word appears as “सिन्धु” — Sindhu. The Ministry of Home Affairs publishes the official material relating to the National Anthem.
But in English translations and discussions of the original poem, the word has often appeared as “Sindh” or “Sind”. Tagore’s own English translation used “Sind”.
This difference has led to an argument that the anthem does not necessarily refer to the modern province of Sindh in Pakistan. Instead, some people interpret the word as Sindhu, the ancient name connected with the Indus River.
The word Sindhu has a very old history. It is associated with the river that we now call the Indus and with the wider civilisation that developed around it. The name of the region, Sindh, is historically connected with this same linguistic root. So the two words are not completely unrelated. This is why calling the issue simply a “spelling mistake” would be misleading.
There is a linguistic and historical connection between Sindhu, Sindh and the Indus region. The 2005 Supreme Court judgment also discussed this wider meaning. It referred to Sindh not only as a geographical area but also to the Sindhi people and the ancient river and civilisation associated with the name. This gives the word another layer of meaning.
If someone hears “Sindh” as the province in Pakistan, the question naturally arises: Why is Pakistan’s territory being mentioned in India’s National Anthem?
But if the word is understood through the older idea of Sindhu, the meaning becomes much wider. It becomes part of the historical geography of the Indian subcontinent rather than a reference to a modern international border.
Still, it is important not to present one interpretation as though it has completely settled the historical debate. The terminology has been understood in different ways in different translations and discussions.
What is clear is that the Government of India has continued with the established text rather than changing the word. And that decision takes us back to the larger purpose of a National Anthem.
Why the Word Has Survived
The story of “Sindh” is ultimately not only about a word. It is about how a country remembers its history.
India’s political boundaries have changed many times since Tagore wrote Jana Gana Mana. New states have been created, old administrative units have disappeared, and borders have changed. But the National Anthem has remained substantially connected to the original composition.
The Supreme Court’s 2005 decision is important because it rejected the idea that the anthem should be rewritten simply to match the modern political map. The Court treated the geographical references as part of India’s cultural and historical identity rather than as a formal list of territories. This also explains why asking, “Why is Rajasthan not mentioned?” does not have the same simple answer as looking at a modern map.
Rajasthan as a unified state came into existence after Independence. The same is true of many other present-day Indian states. Tagore could not have written the anthem using a map that did not yet exist. The anthem belongs to another historical moment.
At the same time, for Sindhis, the word has a very personal history. Partition forced many Sindhi families to leave their homes, businesses and ancestral places in Sindh. They rebuilt their lives in different parts of India. For many of them, the word “Sindh” in the National Anthem can therefore be seen as a reminder of a homeland that was lost through Partition.
It is difficult to measure that emotional meaning because it is personal and differs from one person to another. But historically, Sindhi identity remained strong even after migration. That is why changing one word is not simply a question of correcting an old geographical reference. It can also become a question about memory, identity and history. Today, when Indians sing:
“Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravida, Utkala, Banga…”
They are not reading out a list of today’s states. They are singing words written in a different India — an India before Partition, before the creation of today’s states and before the political borders that now separate India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Perhaps that is the reason the debate around “Sindh” has survived for so long. The word can be read as a place, a people, a river, a civilisation and a memory.
And whether one calls it Sindh or Sindhu, its presence in Jana Gana Mana tells us something important: national symbols often carry layers of history that cannot be understood by looking at a modern map alone.
References:
- Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India — National Flag, Emblem and Anthem; MHA — National Anthem documents https://www.mha.gov.in
- Ministry of Culture / Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav — Jana Gana Mana history, Government of India — Jana Gana Mana material https://cmsadmin.amritmahotsav.nic.in
- Supreme Court judgment — Sanjeev Bhatnagar v. Union of India (2005) Full Supreme Court judgment https://indiankanoon.org
- MHA — official National Anthem order/document: Ministry of Home Affairs — National Anthem order https://www.mha.gov.in