Impression

Introduction

In the last chapter, we discussed the manner in which religiosity enshrined in the ways of seeing the flag became an object aspired to be administered, ordered and controlled by the modern state. The sacred and the symbolic display of the sovereignty interacted closely to give way to a new constellation of the visual political in which citizen's relationship with the flag had to be defined and regulated. The second part of the chapter moved towards contemporary period and its media environment when people successfully fought against state-regulated relationship with the flag. The judiciary accepted the citizen's claim to determine the rituals of display in their own terms by liberalizing the state's monopoly over the display of the flag. In this process, rituals of reverence for the flag acquired certain de-territoriality, started circulating in the everyday life of the nation in a less defined manner. In this process, the media environment behaved both as a context as well as a catalyst leaving us gasping with an enormous proliferation of unwaved flags. Extending the engagement with the contemporary period and the construction of ties between citizen and the flag, this chapter proposes to delve into two specific strands of politics: gender and communalism that go into the making of such ties. This exploration will help us to not merely locate the various moorings of the abstract figure of citizen vis-à-vis the flag but, will also introduce new dimensions where the flag remains not just a symbol but adopts a certain materiality, a life of its own. This is a story where performance, stereotypes and history are enmeshed with each other blurring the distinction between seeing, knowing and believing. We enter into this web through a performance.