Recently Government of India, a.k.a. Modi Sarkar, announced that while celebrating Aazadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, it has been decided that people be asked to hoist the national flag atop their houses.
On the face of it, it looks like an innocuous exercise, but with the government creating task force to ensure the implementation, this move smells of an ulterior agenda.
The government might use this an an excuse to mark out people who don’t hoist the flag and then term them as ‘Anti-National’. This scheme does not look much different than the Nazi Scheme of marking houses of Jews in Germany.
In particular, the government may get people or its political cadre to photograph all houses that don’t hoist the Tricolor. And then target those people. It is tragic that while the nation is in the grip of economic decline, price rise is rampant, even ordinary food items have been brought under the ambit of GST and jobs are being lost, the government is busy in creating ‘celebrations’ where none are required.
Hoisting the Tricolor or not hoisting it should come from the hearts of the people and not through force of an order. Hoisting of Tricolor is no guarantee that people who do so are nationalists and patriotic. In fact the converse may be true.
For the record, RSS, the parent organization of BJP, was opposed to Tricolor as national flag and did not hoist it on its offices for 52 years after independence.
The Tiranga on every house sounds similar to the Taali, Thaali, Ghanti call during the pandemic. It will achieve nothing. Lighting nine lamps at 9 O’Clock on 05.04.2021 did not achieve anything. It just promoted superstition in the minds of Indians.
The Government should concentrate its energies on managing the economy rather than doing ‘Utsav’ of all kinds. But it seems diversions are necessary to keep citizens engaged in fruitless tasks….