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National Symbols [Nov. 25th, 2003|10:33 am]

The Times of India today carried an article that was very interestingly titled – ABVP activists spoils students’ revelery.

I groaned as I read the headline assuming that the ABVP, like other student political parties, was at it again, making a nuisance of themselves. But as I read the article I was surprised that a newspaper as prominent as the ToI would put such a misleading headline. The story goes that a set of students in their revelery had torn the national flag, tied it to the neck of a beer bottle and burnt it.

It is surprising that the exception taken to a dastardly act was given more prominence that the act itself.

For some reason we don’t really seem to take our national symbols very seriously.

It is shameful that theatres, which are playing a movie that has the national anthem being rendered, have to put up a sign at the beginning of a show asking patrons to stand at attention when the national is sung. Do we have to be told such things? Are not the words of the anthem, or even it’s opening bars enough to make an Indian stand up and pay his respects?

A friend recently told me that in certain villages it is possible to get peacock meat. It seems the village boys tresspass into the nearby wildlife sanctuary and kill the birds, then dress them before carrying the bird out in the guise of it being a chicken.

We seem to make a huge hullaboo about fashion designers using national symbols on their creations, but such acts of desecration pass of unnoticed.

It is high time we begin taking a little pride in our nation and its identity!