IT was a strange request made to India’s Supreme Court, but by admitting it, the high court has reopened some of the old wounds between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars in the past. The petition to the court sought an amendment of the Indian national anthem, "Jana Gana Mana", which was written by one of India’s greatest poets, Rabindranath Tagore, at the time when India and Pakistan were not partitioned, thus including references to regions and people not forming part of India anymore.

The court has issued a notice to the Indian government on the petition seeking the deletion of the word "Sindh" from "Jana Gana Mana" as the state was no longer part of India after the partition in 1947. In response to the representation, the Home Ministry replied that the anthem was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950. At that time, Sindh had already become a part of Pakistan and therefore the assembly was conscious of this fact. "The word ‘Sindh’ refers not merely to the province of Sindh but also to the Sindhi culture, which is an inalienable part of the rich and diverse culture of India," it said. Estimates put the number of Sindhis (both Muslim and Hindu, but mostly Muslim) at close to 35 million in Pakistan and 4 million in India.

The issue has all the ingredients to get everyone charged up, especially when there are sections of people all over the country who feel that India and Pakistan should go the Germany way and eliminate the Line of Control (LoC) like the Berlin
Wall; on the other hand there are equally vehement people who say that India and Pakistan should go to war and finish off the whole business once and for all. But the Supreme Court in its own wisdom, by admitting the petition, has set off one more instance of people taking diametrically opposite stances, as always happens when an issue is coloured by an India-versus-Pakistan standpoint.

There are those who believe that national symbols should reflect reality and must be suitably amended to mirror the country represented, with some arguing that the word "Sindh" should be replaced by "Kashmir", which does not figure in the national anthem. They refer to the example of Russia, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union replaced the lyrics of the old national anthem with a new one, taking care to mirror modern Russia and deleting all mention of Josef Stalin.

Predictably, Sanjiv Bhatnagar, a Delhi-based lawyer who started it all by filing the petition in the first place, said in an interview to a prominent newspaper: "With regard to the subject matter of my petition, the inclusion of a Pakistani province in an Indian anthem, it is ultra vires of Article 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution." On being queried whether he was hurting the feelings of Sindhis, Bhatnagar said, "They are former Sindhis. They are Indians now. If you call them Sindhis, then you should call President Musharraf a Delhiite as he was born in Delhi. But I don’t have anything against Sindhis - I can feel their pain ... There’s a difference between the situation in 1911, when the anthem was written, and now. Sindhis can be given much more importance in a new anthem."

The counter-arguments, however, have been quite persuasive, empha-sising that the entire debate is need-less, against the spirit of universal brotherhood, and that the cultural context of Tagore’s song should be kept in mind rather than the later political interpretations. There are also examples of other nations that have struck to original renditions of their anthems despite geographical alterations later.

Then again, it is not only that Kashmir has not been mentioned in the anthem, there would also be a case for including the names of the north-eastern states, Madhya Pradesh, and newly created states such as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The entire south of India has been referred to as "dravida" instead of mentioning individual states.

"In my opinion, Sanjiv Bhatnagar, who filed the petition to delete the word ‘Sindh’ from the national anthem, is no patriot," reads a letter by a reader published in a national daily. "At a time when nations are trying to bridge cartographic divides, he raises a foolish cry. Amending Tagore’s poetic masterpiece would be nothing short of sacrilege. It would mark the beginning of an era where people who refuse to look beyond the Macmohan and Radcliffe lines will butcher literary classics. Such people care a damn about the nation, all they want is cheap publicity."

Indeed, Sindhis residing in India are piqued by the whole controversy and have formed an action committee with representatives from all the major Sindhi organisations and have appointed former law minister Ram Jethmalani as their advocate.