IN HIND SIGHT: FLAGS ON FIRE
Raouf Gangjee

The Statesman
p?clid=19&theme=&usrsess=1&id=187548
J an 26 2008
India

I’m a bit scared of the national flag. What if someday I accidentally
swing my feet or more lowly parts toward it, and find myself in jail
for no intended affront?

Sania Mirza was recently called for a foot fault committed in another
country. She was photographed sitting with her feet directed toward
a small plastic tricolour, and some super-patriots decided to kick up
a racket over it. She has been summoned by an Indian court. After all
this she reportedly considered hanging up her racquet, if not herself.

In Australia, the country where she made the faux pas, there are no
restrictions on what you can do with their flag. You may burn it. It
has even been destroyed in the name of art, by a Melbourne artist who
torched and mounted his national flag as an exhibit at a Melburnian
gallery. Such are the hot trends.

The Australian prime minister’s comment at the time was, "I don’t
think we achieve anything by making it a criminal offense. We only
turn yahoo behaviour into martyrdom."

In the USA, defacing a flag is a citizen’s constitutional right. In
the judgment establishing this, Justice William J Brennan of their
Supreme Court wrote, "We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its
desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished
emblem represents."

But if you really want to have fun with flag-burning, go to Denmark.

There, you’re allowed to desecrate the Danish flag yet not the flag
of any other country. I plan to travel there one day and cook their
colours, while taunting them with, "Make my day, Danes! Just try it
with mine!"

India has a Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act under which
one can be jailed for up to three years if bringing the flag ‘into
contempt’. Thus I have little to say about our honour, whether as an
Act or actuality; but will remind you that around the world many a
dignitary’s prickly sense of pride has bred contempt for human rights.

In Turkey, the charge of ‘insulting national honour’ has been used
to silence people and deny the Armenian Genocide under the Ottomans.

(Guess who had the box seats!) When politicians talk too loudly about
honour they are usually trying to cover a fault or commit a crime.

And when the media do it, it’s to make people rage and spend their
wage, as in the recent cricket controversy where all objectivity was
lost over a ball game (it’s the eyeball game that counts for us). One
is reminded of the Football War between El Salvador and Honduras in
1969, where the media helped inflame enmities, lower standards and
drive everyone up the pole.

When freedom is restricted it can be a slippery slope. Let’s not
forget that the Nazis began by banning some types of art, and went on
to ban types of human beings. The Taliban first spoke of transparent
consensus and ended with a one-eyed dictator leading the veiled. And
Simon Cowell started in the mail room at EMI Music but now ‘goes
postal’ each time he hears a nasal singer.

Should banners symbolise banning everything? Let’s hope the fabric
of democracy is stronger than a piece of cloth. And that its citizens
don’t get burned up by every matchstick man.