Song, cake, country

Grave dangers to the Republic are being revealed within, and home ministers both at the Centre and in the states are striving to articulate their vigilance. Listen! The home minister of Karnataka, M.P. Prakash, informed the state assembly that he was awaiting a report from the Mysore police on Infosys chief mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy8217;s comment on why he played an instrumental version of the national anthem this weekend. Appropriate action, he said, would be taken thereafter. Prakash8217;s counterpart at the Centre, Sriprakash Jaiswal, is engaged in a more distant investigation. He says he is seeking the identity of the person who modelled a cake on the Tricolour, a cake which then found itself deliciously poised to be cut by Sachin Tendulkar at a function in Jamaica during the Indian team8217;s lean stint there last month.

The most sobering realisation in this sudden bout of righteous hysteria about alleged insults to national symbols is the haste with which ministers are submitting to outrageously simplistically constructed touchstones of patriotism. Murthy had said after an Infosys function that a plan to have the national anthem sung had been cancelled because foreign employees present would have been embarrassed at their ignorance of the lyric. This is an opinion. Any attempt to package it as an insult to national honour is only cosseting nationalist fundamentalism. The same applies to the case of Tendulkar and the cake he ceremoniously cut in Jamaica. And in his case, one wonders whether such a controversy could have ensued had his team not crashed out of the World Cup.

The ministers are right, there is a danger visible. But that danger is to be found not in silly allegations about national honour being violated. That danger is to be heard in the sad silence of nationally feted personalities, who aren8217;t making a case based on liberal democratic values. Murthy and Tendulkar have no need to apologise. This silence exists because on the streets and in our legislatures a wholly specious outrage is being used to hush the voices of liberalism. And that really is an insult to national honour.