Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rise of the Flag
- 2 Flag on the Hut: Totem and a Political Symbol
- 3 The Indian National Flag as a Site of Daily Plebiscite
- 4 Shades of History: A Case of Saffron Colour
- 5 Visualizing an Ideal Political Order
- 6 A Post-Colonial Symbol
- 7 Gendered Symbol, Communal Politics
- Epilogue The Flag as a Sacred Political Symbol
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Flag on the Hut: Totem and a Political Symbol
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Rise of the Flag
- 2 Flag on the Hut: Totem and a Political Symbol
- 3 The Indian National Flag as a Site of Daily Plebiscite
- 4 Shades of History: A Case of Saffron Colour
- 5 Visualizing an Ideal Political Order
- 6 A Post-Colonial Symbol
- 7 Gendered Symbol, Communal Politics
- Epilogue The Flag as a Sacred Political Symbol
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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,
In Suye Mura flags were not only set up for holidays, boy's ceremonies and completion of house frame work—they also marked funerals and memorial services for the dead. They also indicated the drafting of young men into army. Before the war when a youth was selected to serve as a soldier, a tall bamboo was cut and stripped to a topknot of leaves. Below this leaf cluster a national flag was fastened and the flagpole was erected in the house yard. The flag was left in position while the son of the house was away in the army, and those houses which had soldiers in training or overseas could be told by the location of the flags.
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).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016