Jism and Jana Gana Mana

As the state government — at the behest of its minor partner, the Nationalist Congress Party — engages in Indian politics’ latest sport, competitive nationalism, a couple of trips back in time may prove illuminating. They would show that the move is both misguided and anachronistic.

First to the seventies, when the government withdrew its insistence that cinema operators play Rabindranath Tagore’s composition to grainy images of a fluttering Tricolour. The immediate reason made sense. Only the very young will fail to recall a troubling scene at the end of each visit to the cinema in the pre-video age. As the anthem began, audiences would begin trooping out of the hall — or else, would stay sunk in their seats, contemplating the box office masala they had just tucked into.

Why persist with a decree that only ended up inviting disrespect, they asked? The question was finally heard in the corridors of power. And public displays of patriotism were limited to a handful of nationally significant occasions.

Now to January 26, 2002. Upon a plea to the courts, the authorities enacted revolutionary changes in the Flag Code. They did away with paranoid restrictions on an individual’s right to unfurl the Tricolour. And the national flag was democratised.

Rightly so. Fifty-five years after India gained independence, fears of fragmentation have faded, and state intervention in fostering nationalism makes little sense. Trusting its citizens to forge respectful relations with hallowed symbols is a pretty accurate test of a nation’s self-confidence and resilience. It’s a test Indians have cleared repeatedly. Roping in Bollywood stars, as the Maharashtra government plans to do, to teach us how to respect the National Anthem smacks of a junta mentality. Empty symbolism doesn’t quite translate into instant patriotism.