In the park, a tricolour is tied half way up a fixed flag pole. Fifty metres away, a mammoth flag flutters from a towering flagpole, more than making up for any slight to patriotism caused by the wrong half-masting. Three more flags of varying sizes around the park, including one on the chai-wallah’s cycle, leave no doubt about the colony’s love for the nation.
Even two weeks after Independence Day, the tiranga is everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, in khadi, polyester and paper. On balconies, terraces and gates. On advertisements, vegetable carts, dhabas, shop fronts. Flower pots, electric poles and even an entire Tata Nano are painted in flag colours. A square flag is projected in neon on a commercial block. Our nationalist spirit doesn’t just live in our hearts: it proclaims itself from the rooftops. From one flyover one can spot three mammoth tirangas, supported no doubt by competing RWAs.
Time was when the national flag was not just a beloved but a sacred object. The Flag Code-India of 1950 allowed unrestricted display of the flag by ordinary citizens only on certain days: Republic Day, Independence Day, Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti and the long-forgotten National Week (April 6-13, in memory of the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh). Strict do’s and don’ts were laid down by the Flag Code, as well as by the underpinning laws: The Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act of 1950 and The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971 regarding the correct use and display of the flag, its approved sizes, its use in military and state funerals, its entire protocol.
Illustration: Deni Lal
But times change. A liberalising economy, technological advances in media and growing confidence changed the culture of our nationalism. The flag could no longer be straitjacketed by state control. Stylised versions were popularised by the Mera Bharat Mahan series and modern takes of Jana Gana Mana and Vande Matharam; it appeared on the cheeks of cricket fans and Sachin Tendulkar famously sported it on his helmet.
Parallel to these trends, a legal campaign to free the flag was launched by the businessman-politician Naveen Jindal. The Supreme Court finally held in 2004 that flying the national flag was a fundamental right, part of the right of speech and expression. Anticipating that judgment, the government had issued a liberalised Flag Code in 2002, the major change being that all citizens could fly the flag when they wanted. Further amendments to the Code and the underlying laws followed: the flag could fly day and night; it could be worn as part of a costume but not below the waist; and it was not mandatory to make flags of khadi alone, polyester was kosher.
So far so good, but here’s the rub: the fundamental right is not unfettered. The flag has to be flown with due respect and dignity. The laws which make disrespect of the flag punishable are still extant. Yet disrespect abounds: flags are heaped by sellers on the pavements; at a paan shop, the saffron is dipping towards the ground; at a show, a dancer holds it upside down. National flags wilt and fray in the rain, they fade in the sharp sun. Three-wheelers sport not one but two huge tricolours; even the liberal Flag Code has a restricted list of those who can fly it on their cars, leave alone three-wheelers. A scooter has the tricolour draped across its front panel. The production is inconsistent, the kesari often a blunt orange, the India green becomes lime green, the proportion not the prescribed 3:2, and so on.
Freedom is beginning to dissolve into disregard and in the case of the national flag, that simply cannot be allowed to happen.
The writer is former ambassador to the US.