I normally strive to stay away from controversies,
any of them, even if remotely possible. But this time around, I thought I shall
share my two cents of thoughts on this.
On the 30th November, 2016, the
Supreme Court of India has ordered that all cinema halls in the country shall screen
and play the national anthem before the start of the cinema and all members of
the audience shall stand in respect during the playing of the national anthem.
As is expected of the ‘Independent and Free’ country, there have been several
reactions, for and against, from the people.
I have been witnessing quite some debates,
reading news articles on the ‘after effects’ of the order on screening and
playing the national anthem in cinema halls before the screening of the actual
film / movie, and was just passing on.
But, yesterday, ‘What price peace in a
movie hall’ a feature by former colleague dear Vaishna Roy, in The Hindu dated 18th
February, 2017 (http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/what-price-peace-in-a-movie-hall/article17320772.ece?homepage=true)
urged me to say my piece and be done with it (hopefully?)! J
Well, there are several questions to start
with.
When should the National Anthem be played,
where and why?
Should one stand up when the national
anthem is being played and why?
Will that be a measure of patriotism?
If somebody cannot stand up because of
physical issues, how will the ‘voluntary moral police’ know of that?
And blah…blah…blah….
Now to answer the above questions, in my
humble opinion (IMHO), national anthems can be played before or after any gathering
of people in the country, with maybe an exception to individual obituary
related programmes. Respecting the national symbols and the anthem, again IMHO,
is not to be an anathema. And how long is it going to take? The official duration
of the Indian National Anthem is 52 seconds. Can’t those, who are able to,
afford to stand up for those 52 seconds in respect of a country - your own
country? To me, experience proved that they can’t, and to the chagrin many won’t
(but then more about it will follow). Well, such standing up may not be counted
as patriotism, but certainly be as a respect.
‘Why
should we be forced to do this? We go to films for watching the film. This order
forces us and we are tensed when forced’ a response of one cine-goer. Now one tends to ask; are we not
watching lengthy commercials before and during the cinema, however repetitive
or irritating and jarring to the ear that they maybe and are? Aren’t we? In
fact ‘WE’ are paying for their thrusting their products and services (paid
again, mind you) on ‘US’!
‘Nationalism
doesn’t mean standing up for the national anthem, it means standing up for the
country, for what’s right. So encourage that’ (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/30/indian-court-orders-cinemas-to-play-national-anthem-before-films)!
Agreed! And as cinema halls do attract
huge gatherings (well, depending on the marketing of the cinemas being screened
at the time), would cinema halls not be a better place to re-start that?
Now,
why the words re-start?
If I remember right, all cinema halls in
the country used to screen the Tricolour (of course, in those days in Black and
White) and play the national anthem since 1962 after the Indo-China war ‘after’
the screening of the film / movie was over to inculcate nationalism and
patriotism too perhaps. But I used to see, without a let up, the audience
rushing, no, actually clambering and scrambling, out of the cinemas, sometimes
even sacrificing the viewing of a most thrilling climax; just because they felt
it a chore - to stand up in silence - for 52 seconds.
Having been brought up with quite a bit of
nationalist values, this running away in the end of the screening was both
annoying and disgusting to me. Annoying because those rushing out were
disturbing those few who wanted to remain and disgusting because of the value
they were attaching or rather not attaching to the National Flag and the Anthem.
As a proud NCC alumni cadet (http://hemantha-kalam.blogspot.in/2014/05/hemantha-kalam-21-clipped-wings-shining.html),
and following the national anthem and symbols with reverence, this blatant
running away from cinema halls was more deplorable
Sometime around 1975 the compulsory
screening and playing of the national flag and the anthem respectively in the
cinema halls was rescinded. Forty one years later the practice is being re-promulgated.
So does this mean that for about 41 years, the citizens, that too the
cinema-goers were disrespecting the flag and the national anthem? No, not
exactly!
But again IMHO, if a government wants to
inculcate national values and nationalism, in the growing generation and enhance
in the existing generations, is it bad or wrong? You give a choice and people
do not practice. When people do not learn and practice, there could be a danger of such
values mis-interpreted or slowly fade away leaving a country of people with
hardly any nationalistic values.
In fact, I can say that today, such a situation
has already set in. If one listens to carefully, one realises that many people
do not sing the anthem with the proper pronunciation or punctuation. I have
heard many a time people inter changing the words ‘Utkala’ and ‘ucchala’ and
most people sing ‘jalasidaranga’ than ‘jaladhi taranga’
So, rather than just make the standing for
the national anthem compulsory, I feel the government should really concentrate
on making the people realise the true meaning of the anthem and the importance
attached to it and this should start in schools; and not at the child level,
but at the teachers’ level. I can swear that most teachers do not understand
the meaning of the importance of the national anthem themselves. This probably
can ease several misconceptions among different sections of the people too.
Some of the objections are due to the language which cannot be properly uttered by some people using other and different languages. Maybe, if the anthem was just a musical theme, devoid of any words, this question might not have arisen but now that there has been an agreement on this anthem, at one point of time, let us learn this properly and practice and respect.
Let the people understand what nationalism
is and what nationalistic values are. In our case, maybe there is an urgency to
even develop federalist values, in the cause of welfare and sharing resources among
all states.
Well, folks, what do you think?
Do let me know, please!
Till then,
Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu
(Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks
(English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie
(Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese),
Shukraan (Arabic), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp
Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming
Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian)
and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea).
Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy
Chennai, India
