New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make some changes in the National Anthem.

Swamy, one of the top lawyers in the country, had written a letter to PM Modi last month, urging him to propose to Parliament that as committed we retain the Jana Gan Mana tune, but replace the wording of the anthem with what Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had incorporated in the Indian National Army (INA) anthem/song. The Netaji proposed wording is substantially the same except that explicit and implicit references to the British King was replaced by patriotic Sanskrit words.

“As you may know, which should be our national anthem, Jana Gana Mana or Vande Mataram, was debated thoroughly in the Constituent Assembly and the opinion had become quite polarised. Therefore in the last day on the 26th November 1949, the President of the constituent Assembly, DR Rajendra Prasad took sense of the house instead of vote, that Jana Gana tune may be accepted that a future Parliament can change the wording of the anthem. This consensus had to be brought because a large number of members had expressed in the debate that the fact that the song was as originally worded, sung in the Kolkata session of the Congress in 1912 to welcome the British King. Dr Prasad recognising the sentiments therefore put off for another day the replacement of the world to a future Parliament,” Swamy in his letter to PM said.

His letter further states: “Netaji's proposed wording is therefore 95 percent the same wording and said that remaining five percent replaces the above said references. Therefore, it will be a befitting reply to all our nationalists freedom fighters and the great patriot Subhas Chandra Bose, by accepting in Parliament his version of Jana Gana Mana wording.”