India's Supreme Court Monday dismissed a call to delete a reference in the national anthem to the province of Sindh in Pakistan.
A petition to the court said the reference was meaningless because Sindh, whose capital is Karachi, became part of Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947 at the end of British colonial rule.
The court told the petitioner, Sanjeev Bhatnagar, to take his concerns to the government instead of the judiciary.
The national anthem, "Jana Gana Mana," was composed by Asia's first Nobel laureate, poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, and was first sung in 1911.
Its English translation begins: "Thou art the rulers of the minds of all people, dispenser of India's destiny / Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and Maratha, of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal."