Some decades ago, this would not have been even considered a topic for a sanctimonious video. Most would have found nothing wrong with wearing the national colours, odd as the combination of saffron-white-green may seem to both the most fashionable and the terminally fashion-challenged. Or using the then-rare opportunity of flying the national flag on balconies, rooftops and vehicles that day. Or even munching a carrot-and-pudina chutney sandwich.
Those were indeed clearer, simpler times. Perhaps because the pain of the freedom struggle and the horrific trauma of Partition inextricably linked to the word ‘Independence’ was still fresh in the minds of most Indians through lived experience. The Indians of the early decades-parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of today’s citizens-had been through it, so for them August 15 could never again be just another day in the life of India and Indians.
Practically every day in the year is now given over to or commandeered for something, whether it is lions or chocolate, LGBTQ rights or poetry, pancakes or museums, friendship or bees-besides well-known ones like Mother’s/Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, and Women’s Day. Some days even have multiple claimants. None of these topics are forsaken or forgotten for 364 days; it is just that for one day they get special attention or sharper focus.
The young Indian woman who lectured her colleague that patriotism meant “something deeper”-apparently best demonstrated by paying taxes, not giving or taking bribes and respecting women rather than “waving jhandas” (flags) for a couple of days in the year-diminishes the unique position of August 15 in our national life that the Indians of an earlier time instinctively knew and respected. Such attitudes are born more out of ignorance than anything else.
Of all 365 days in the year, for Indians, August 15 cannot and should never be anything less than a very special day: of remembrance, thanksgiving and celebration. For some, like the woman in the video, it may indeed mean just paying taxes (though the last date would have been over the previous month) but there is absolutely nothing downmarket or remotely jingoistic about doing something substantive to commemorate the rebirth of our nation.
If that woman had bothered to read the speech Nehru gave in the Constituent Assembly when introducing the new flag to the members to adopt as the national Tiranga in July 1947, and the deeper meaning of its colours and chakra as elaborated that day by eminent Indians such as Dr S Radhakrishnan, she would not have dismissed waving it as a mere jingoistic activity. Nor would she have sneered about wearing any of those colours on Independence Day.
It is true that a nation cannot be stuck in a time-warp when it comes to attitudes towards events. What Independence Day meant to Indians in 1947 cannot remain unchanged for 75 years, especially when less than 4% of our population today were around on 15 August 1947. But the memories of that day and time must be remembered and respected: that overwhelming emotion, that searing pain, that unconscionable loss, that brimming pride, that audacious hope.
Indians like me, born after Independence, can never fathom what the generations before us felt when they saw ‘the soul of a nation long suppressed find utterance” as Jawaharlal Nehru so evocatively said on the eve of Independence in his famous Tryst with Destiny speech. So for me and many others, waving flags, wearing the tricolour or doing other ‘silly’ things are gestures to show that the 1947 spirit and emotion lives on in us, not to prove or define (redefine?) patriotism.