On the flag and the national honour

The Indian cricket team has been sued for insulting the national flag.
Apparently, the way the flag was handled during the after match celebrations was deemed insulting.

Team India accused of 'insulting' tricolour

We seem to be seeing more and more of such lawsuits that border on the trivial. A couple of months ago, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy was subjected to this farce as well for allegedly insulting the national anthem.

Anyone in India knows that cricket is a binding force and the Indian cricket team is a substantial cohesive influence on the country. Mud slinging these youths is just an attempt at petty publicity.

We are a flag crazy country, every time a politician needs to make an impact, a new flag pole is erected and a flag hoisted there. Every city has at least a bunch of these poles flying either the national flag or the state flag. The real insult to a flag happens here. Most of the flags end up being weather beaten and torn with gaping holes. Nobody seems to perceive this as a problem.

But these publicity hounds are always on the lookout for individuals that they can target for maximum mileage, the bigger the individual, the greater the witch-hunt.

Since we are on flags, I might as well write about something that had bothered me for a long time and only recently have been able to appreciate the use of it. I am talking about USA where the freedom for citizens to burn their national flag is permitted by law.

How can a country allow it's citizens to burn it's own flag ?. A conventional outlook will not give us the answer. For me, a flag represents a set of values that a country was built upon. It is a metaphor for the principles that are the foundation of a country's constitution. If these principles are blatantly flouted by its own government, then a citizen may feel that this can be best demonstrated by burning the flag as a way symbolizing that the value system of the country is being burnt down.

In India, we have had situations which have been a blot on our founding values. The Babri masjid issue, the Bombay blasts, the Godhra train carnage and the subsequent Gujarat riots. As exposed by the media, at various levels, official complicity was involved in most of these events.

Every time official machinery turns a wanton blind eye to obvious desecration of constitutional values, the Indian flag burns.

When looked at it this way, the American law makes sense.

But I would like to quickly add that I do not support such a freedom in India, for the simple reason that in our culture, we have used burning as way of demonstrating hate. Effigies of personalities are burnt, buses are burnt and so on. The intent of burning in these cases is vastly different from the intent of burning a flag. Hence this is a freedom that we cannot comprehend or afford.

By the way, as an aside, did you know that the most preferred way of disposing the Indian Flag is to burn it ?.

THE PREVENTION OF INSULTS TO NATIONAL HONOUR ACT, 1971

PART. III
HOISTING/DISPLAY OF THE NATIONAL FLAG BY THE CENTRAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS AND THEIR ORGANISATIONS AND AGENCIES.


SECTION V
3.25 When the Flag is in a damaged or soiled condition, it shall be destroyed as a whole in private, preferably by burning or by any other method consistent with the dignity of the Flag.


Next time you buy a flag during Independence day, make sure you don't dump it in the dustbin but give it a decent disposal (yet another reason to shun the plastic ones).

That would be truly honouring our national symbol.