Impression

And this big flag and lathi … and the flag was used for gathering chutki.’

Introduction

The sacred, the everyday and the political are so closely intertwined in the symbol of the flag that the thin line between them often gets blurred. One may even go a step ahead to argue that in the history of the flag these are indeed inseparable and in their indistinguishable and dynamic coiling, both politics and the sacred, draw strength from each other. Writing on the symbolism of flags, anthropologist Raymond Firth gives a compelling ethnographic observation of this coming together of the sacred, the quotidian and the political in the practices of the flag. This is about a Japanese village of Suye Mura. Referring John Embree he writes,

The national flag travels a long distance in this ethnographic account. The flag seems to be occupying everyday moments: from holidays to funeral services. It identifies the absence of soldiers from their homes and informs about their presence at the national border. The power of the flag empties houses from their soldier sons, transforms a totemic sign into political symbol and nationalizes the gaze. However, I would like to argue that the power of the semiotic field, the national flag, should not merely be seen in the act of its occupancy either over houses, over holidays or over funeral services. In the scopic regimes of the nation, it is not merely a case of houses getting transformed into the nation (by the presence or absence of the national flag).