Jingoists can make the national anthem a source of national shame

Sharp observer of human behaviour as he was, Samuel Johnson got it wrong when he noted that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It is the first refuge of a scoundrel — or, as in a case in Mumbai on Friday, five scoundrels. A man was beaten up when his friend remained sitting when the national anthem was playing in a cinema. That the 'sitting person' was not Indian doesn't matter. Once symbols of a nation ostensibly created to trigger warm, fuzzy feelings are turned into enforceable codes of behaviour, they move from being benign tools to something more sinister.

In the Mumbai case, even the police to whom the two victims went to complain about the violent exchange allegedly castigated them for one of them not standing while things were Jana Gana Mana-ing. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act — which sounds hilarious until you know that it isn't — considers it a crime when the singing of the national anthem is prevented or disturbed. In a non-moronic world, it would have been the patriotic goons who would have been found disturbing the lilt of Jana Gana Mana, not the person quietly sitting through it. But then, this is a Mumbai that mandates by law the playing of the national anthem in cinemas. Thankfully, the rest of the nation is happy to lag behind Maharashtra in the patriotic stakes.