Flag should be displayed and moviegoers
should stand for anthem, to make them feel ‘this is my motherland’, court rules
By Michael Safi
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Students salute next to a
flag as they sing the national anthem in Hyderabad.
Photograph: Noah
Seelam/AFP/Getty Images
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India’s supreme court has ordered cinemas
across the country to play the national anthem before film screenings to
encourage citizens to “feel this is my country and this is my motherland”.
Indians weary from weeks of standing in
queues at banks and ATM machines will get no reprieve at the cinema: the court
also directed that moviegoers should “stand up in respect” while the anthem is
played.
The decision by the country’s highest court
on Tuesday is one of number of recent developments that have drawn India’s
cinema industry into disputes over patriotism and national identity.
The panel of judges was responding to public
interest litigation that claimed the national anthem was regularly being
dishonoured, including in cinemas, where it was already required to be played
before films in the states of Maharashtra and Goa.
“People should feel that they live in a
nation and show respect to the national anthem and the national flag,” the
court said.
Too much disrespect of national symbols had
been indulged in the name of “individually perceived notions of freedom”, it
added.
The Indian flag should be displayed and the
doors of cinemas should be closed during the rendition to prevent people from
entering or leaving, the court said.
It also banned anybody from dramatising the
national song, printing it on an “undesirable object”, singing an abridged
version or making money from it.
The anthem, Jana Gana Mana, was last ordered
to be played in cinemas across India after the country’s 1962 war with China,
but its strains were largely ignored by most moviegoers, and the practice was
eventually discontinued.
Long known for its formulaic song-and-dance
numbers, Indian popular cinema has in the past decade tackled significant
social issues including religious tension – in My Name is Khan (2010), for
example – and rape and sexual assault (Pink, 2016).
But the industry has experienced pushback,
including from India’s censorship board, which in June ordered more than 90
changes to a film about drug problems in the state of Punjab, including the
removal of any references to Punjab.
The cinema industry was caught up in recent
tensions between India and Pakistan after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in
Kashmir by militants with alleged Pakistani backing. The Indian Motion Picture
Producers Association announced it was banning Pakistanis from appearing in
Indian films.
Ultranationalist groups threatened to disrupt
the screening of a Bollywood blockbuster starring Fawaz Khan, an actor from
Lahore. Khan was forced to skip the premiere of the film over the controversy,
and has not returned to India since.
In Goa in October, Salil Chaturvedi, a writer
and activist who uses a wheelchair, was allegedly assaulted in a cinema by
another patron who was incensed that he had not stood during the anthem.
The election in 2014 of the prime minister,
Narendra Modi, a devotee of a Hindu nationalist ideology traditionally at odds
with India’s secular and pluralist political customs, has fuelled fierce
debates over the country’s character.
Critics say the political ascension of Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata party has emboldened Hindu supremacists and given voice to a
more divisive and narrower definition of patriotism.
Shylashri Shankar, a research fellow who has
written a book on the Indian supreme court, said on Wednesday after the anthem
ruling that it was “a bit worrisome that it is, in a sense, putting its weight
behind notions of nationalism and what it means to be Indian”.
She said she remembered the anthem being
played at cinemas when she was a child, “but the notion of the anthem then was
different to what it is now, when it is imbued with much more weight”.
Tamil film industry glorifies the stalking of
women, activists say
One cinemagoer in south Delhi, 22-year-old
Surabhi, said the order was “going against what we go to the movies for”.
“We want to relax, to enjoy ourselves, to
spend time with family and friends. We stand for the national anthem when it
plays before a speech, or the Republic Day parade, or in school. At the beginning
of a film it serves no purpose,” she said.
“Nationalism doesn’t mean standing up for the
national anthem, it means standing up for your country, for what’s right. So
encourage that.”
Furqan, 26, agreed. “I don’t have to prove my
nationalism and patriotism every time I go anywhere. It’s coming into our
private spaces, our private lives,” she said.
Nitin Datar, head of the Maharashtra-based
Cinema Owners and Exhibitors Association, welcomed the supreme court’s order.
He said some of the country’s 9,000 single-screen cinemas might struggle to
implement the order quickly, but would have no trouble making sure its patrons
stood during the anthem.
“There are very few stray cases [where people
don’t stand] but otherwise the public respect the anthem,” he said.
