NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Flying The Tricolour

Is it a crime to be a patriot? While cheap, imbecilic demonstrations of national pride get away so easily in our movies, the ordinary citizen is not even allowed to put up an Indian flag atop his house or office except on January 26 or August 15. Why? According to a recent newspaper report, the Flag Code asserts that putting up our flag except on national days is an assault on our pride and therefore, deserves severe punishment.

Navin Jindal, a young Texas-returned MBA, has been fighting our enforcement agencies and insisting that it is his Fundamental Right as an Indian citizen to fly the tricolour atop his house and factory at Rajgarh. Earlier, as president of the Texas University Students Union, he had proudly hung the Indian flag in his office and he refuses to accept the fact that now, back home, he is being punished for doing the same thing.

Armed with the Delhi high court's 1995 ruling that the state cannot deny a citizen his Fundamental Rights through an executive order like the Flag Code, Jindal insisted on flying the flag at home and where he works. But the local authorities threatened to punish him, referring to a 1997 Supreme Court stay order. Not one to easily give up, Jindal sought the best legal advice. K K Venugopal, Shanti Bhushan, Harish Salve, Arun Jaitley and Soli Sorabjee argued on his behalf that no citizen of India must be stopped from flying the tricolour as long as he or she does not show any disrespect to the symbol of free India. Yet the Government of India, on the persuasion of the Rajgarh police, continues to waste money fighting the case against Jindal, arguing that he is committing contempt of the apex court.

It is 53 years since India became free. The world has changed a great deal since then. Freedom drives most of our basic rights as citizens and yet we, as a nation, are still trapped in this amazing time warp where a proud Indian cannot fly his national flag without the permission of the police or the courts. Does it surprise you why more and more young Indians today prefer to belong to the global universe of Pepsi and Coke, Nike and MTV, McDonalds and Tommy Hilfiger whose colours they would rather fly than the Indian flag?

Last weekend I was listening to some very bright and talented young girls and boys speaking on, among other subjects, Kashmir at an elocution contest in Mumbai organised by the Cama Oriental Institute. I was, frankly, surprised by the number of them who believed that the problems in Kashmir stemmed not so much from armed mercenaries exported to the valley by a belligerent Pakistan hell bent on destroying India, as is the official government position, but from the trampling of human rights and the denial of freedom to the Kashmiri people by both the Indian and the Pakistani governments.

In other words, more and more spirited young people today see nothing wrong or anti-national in spurning the official line. They believe, like we did in the seventies, that denial of freedom is the most heinous crime. The response to this, however violent, however brutal, is always forgivable. The more you repress, the more you insist on laws and ordinances, the more you depend on the brute might of the police or the army to have your way, the more you alienate the people. Be it on cultural issues. Be it on enforcing law and order. Be it on simple things like flying your national flag.

You see it everywhere you look. The bigger the bandobust, the larger the demonstration. The stronger your laws are against alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, the more powerful the criminal syndicates that run them. Because the more you ban, the more will be the defiance against the ban. The answer therefore, in this era of liberalisation, does not lie in more and more repressive laws, more and more state intervention in our lives but in a stronger, better, more adult and mature understanding of what freedom actually means. To us, as individuals. To us, as citizens of India.

That is why it is idiotic to try and stop an act of celebration like the Independence Rock Concert or harass those who hold it. That is why it is so stupid to try and ban anything that does not conform to the mindset of the political gerontocracy that continues to run India. We must remember that a new and young generation is swiftly emerging and we need to understand what they stand for. Their values, their needs, their compulsions. We need to create that free, unfettered environment in which their talents can grow, mature, find fruition. After all, they have to compete with the rest of the free world, not live (like we have done over the past 52 years) like blindfolded frogs in the dark, deep well of our own ignorance.

The only way ahead for India is to stop believing in what our political leaders and their slave bureaucracy teach us and, in the memorable words of Freddie Mercury, to break free. Break free from cant and hypocrisy. Break free from those stupid, outdated, old-fashioned verities that we insist on imposing on our people as laws, as traditions.

In fact, India does not need so many shopworn laws and traditions. It needs to brace itself for more freedom. That is the only way it can strengthen its future and arm its citizens to cope with the challenges of the new millennium.

Pritish Nandy

Tell us what you think of this column