Fight over India’s beautiful anthem is getting ugly
IABSOLUTELY love India’s national anthem and can be unabashedly maudlin about the hope and pride it triggers when I hear it. Composed by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who would later return his knighthood to protest the British Army’s massacre of unarmed Indians in 1919, the anthem was first sung at a convention of the Indian National Congress in preindependence India. In a multireligious country that speaks 780 languages, the anthem is a great unifier, binding the warp and the weft of India’s incomparably colourful tapestry. We learn how to sing it before we can read the alphabet. And we stand ram rod straight as a mark of respect when it plays. Above all else, my country’s anthem reminds me that, unlike so many other parts of the world, I am free in India, even if ours is an untidy democracy.
That the anthem is now the subject of bickering on TV talk shows is a trivialisation of what it stands for. The debate first erupted when a Supreme Court judge (now the chief justice) passed an interim order in November 2016 directing that the anthem be played and the Indian flag be compulsorily displayed before any movie is screened in theatres. This week, the bench appeared to have a rethink, declaring that it was for the government – and not the judiciary – to set the rules. So far, the attorney general has batted in favour of the court’s earlier verdict.
Personally, I am very happy to stand in movie halls for the 52 seconds it asks of me. But I am also uncomfortable with labelling fellow citizens who challenge the court’s original diktat as “anti-national”. If you see the anthem like I do, as the song of our hard-won liberty, that freedom encompasses the right of citizens to disagree and dissent. And some of them are also asking – why only movies? Why not make the anthem mandatory in government offices, parliament and the courts?
Last year, I was pained to interview Salil Chaturvedi, a paralysis survivor, author and poet who is wheelchair bound. He was beaten in a cinema theatre for not jumping to his feet when the anthem played; his assaulters evidently did not know of his spinal injuries since the wheelchair was placed in a corner of the hall. “Do I have to wear a disability badge?” – a furious Salil asked me, revealing that he was the son of an air force officer. “We know what patriotism is.” There have been other stray examples as well. But more than what the court recognised as the “misuse” of its order, what’s depressing, is using lazy labels like “nationalists” and “traitors”.
In 1945, George Orwell warned that “nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism”. The author of the dystopian novel 1984 that was prescient in its prediction of the “Big Brother” defined nationalism as “. . . the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.” And this is exactly the problem – our “nationalism” is being contorted into hashtags and hate. The cruel judgments we make of those who may challenge inherited wisdom undermine the very republic we claim to be defending.
In an age of populism, nationalism is being peddled like soap. Nativist television anchors encourage a competitive circus in which jingoists fight over who is more “nationalist”.
And this overlooks those who are quietly patriotic: the dignified soldier who serves his country in battle, the philanthropists and activists who feed the hungry and fight the corrupt, the honest, hardworking citizen who voluntarily cleans the public beach, the highflying, dollar-earning Wall Street banker who returns home and never converts the green card into a US passport – love for your country is expressed in myriad ways. But when you need to boast about it, it’s not patriotism; its jingoism.
Most national anthems are not meant to codify or police our behaviour; they are songs of freedom. They are a celebration of what our countries are – or should aspire to be. This is why I admire the takea-knee campaign by NFL players and other athletes in America. Their contentious decision to kneel while the anthem is played is a rightsdriven activism that demands an end to the discrimination of people of colour. This is not an insult to America; it’s a citizenry that is peacefully engaged in wanting better for their people. What could be more patriotic than that?
When we start policing patriotism we are in danger of pushing the sublime to the ridiculous. As one of judges on the Supreme Court bench said: “Next thing will be that people should not wear T-shirts and shorts to movies because it will amount to disrespect for the anthem; where do we stop this moral policing?”
I love my anthem. But I dislike coercion of thought. I think that makes me a patriot.