Flagging on-red flags with a keen eye

One of the most fascinating things about professional morons is their ability to decontextualise things. Or, inability to see things in context. The function of this skill/deficiency is to rage against a set menu of gripes. Take a play conducted by preschoolers as part of this year’s Independence Day cultural programme at an Indore school. Dramatising the freedom movement, culminating in partition and independence of India, and the creation of a new state, the Indian tricolour was depicted, as was a lone Pakistani flag as part of the skit. ABVP activists, spotting their ‘not favourite’ insignia on social media where someone had posted a video clip of the production, did what they were formed to do: go bonkers.

Demonstrating their demonstrative powers, these professional morons took to the streets for an hour, demanding action against the school. But, then, no demand was made for any teacher or kid to ‘Go to Pakistan!’ or anyone accused of ‘sedition‘. That a Pakistani flag was used as a prop to depict the – wait for it – creation of Pakistan won’t cut ice with these folks. The play could have done by depicting a flag, or even a symbolic pirate’s Jolly Roger. After all, if a play depicting Nazi Germany depicts the Nazi swastika, how would Germans like it, hmm? Such semiotic vigilance can only be marvelled – you can’t make it up.