Flagging the problem

Rahul Pandey, who has been described in article after article as a “local lawyer” (local to where is not entirely clear) filed a partition before the before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Kanpur, objecting to the way the Indian cricket team handled the Indian flag after their victory in the 20-20 world cup tournament. The insult has been described with the following statement - "Dhoni and several other players not only wrapped themselves in the tricolour, but also rolled on the ground. This was followed by spraying of champagne that fell on the flag."

The act was covered in a series of minor news articles and was given short shrift by most readers. Reactions on the internet were mostly that of bewilderment and disgust. Since the victory was considered a moment of national pride, most of those who reacted appeared to think that the members of the Indian cricket team were icons of this pride and were not wrong in their draping the flag around themselves. The issue raised interesting questions about how the Indian flag is treated both by law and in practice and about flags in general. What is it about rectangular (mostly) pieces of cloth which raise such passion and spirit amongst those represented by it?

Flags very clearly are symbols. They are a clear and present symbol of unity and sovereignty of those represented by the flag. One of the simplest methods of insulting a country or institution is to damage or burn the flag of the institution. Burning the flag is considered legitimate albeit controversial protest in some countries like the United States but not so in many others. It is considered a direct affront or negation of the powers of the institution if burnt or damaged especially within the territory of the country. Demonstrators and separatists around the world regularly destroy flags as a sign of a range of emotions from displeasure to independence. Just as body language, posturing and language may be interpreted differently in different parts of the world so can the treatment of a national symbol.

As human beings we live our lives surrounding ourselves by symbols. We use and read into symbols of Gods, religions, body-brands, tattoos, words, commercial brands and emotional markers of the past, present and even the future. Swastikas are symbols which have been used historically for hundreds if not thousands of years by atleast three religions – Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. They can be traced to some symbols amongst some of the tribes of north America, to the Hindus of Bali, Indonesia, to books in China and even to Eastern European and Persian cultures. Yet it’s reinterpretation within Nazi administration and culture made the swastika in the minds of many, representative of the evil and cruelty of the Nazi regime. The popularity of this reinterpretation is exemplified by the aerial image of a housing complex in Florida in 2007 seen on Google earth. The panoptical model (sic) of a central core and housing wings moving out is considered efficient for services and sunlight in housing and for monitoring inmates in prisons. Yet some people believed, as exemplified through news articles and news programs, that the housing complex was a secret Nazi symbol showing solidarity with the fascist Germans. Nobody, to the knowledge of this writer, considered the plan a secret Balinese Hindu symbol, even though the Balinese Hindus have used the swastika much longer than the Nazis ever did. Thus the treatment and interpretation of the symbol varied from place to place and from time to time and the popularity of interpretations and meaning matter.

The most important personal symbols are often the inheritance or photographs of loved ones. As an example, photographs (unless one believes in black magic) do not harm the people in the photograph. Yet upon entering anyone’s house, it would be considered misbehavior and disrespectful if one attempted to damage or even tamper with photographs of loved ones. Most people do not appropriate all photographs or items with that symbolic value. They chose the ones which mean something to them and make them symbolic. These personal symbols hold such value to individuals that the right to carry them or having them confiscated during incarceration of prisoners are considered amongst the standards of human rights. If individuals are clearly granted that right to chose their symbols and how they wish those symbols treated as a fundamental human right, so can collectives of individuals like nations.

Countries thus have the right to appropriate dignity to their flag. National pride is often vested in those symbolic flags. The question is thus not whether an individual citizen has the right to demand respect of the national flag. He or she obviously does. Contrary to the beliefs of some, Rahul Pandey may well be within his rights to demand that the flag be given the respect it deserves and he has the right to his day in court by the standards accorded to democratic rule. This, despite the fact that he has chosen a moment of national pride and joy to bring up the issue, to the chagrin of many. The question is whether the case has merit within both the spirit and letter of the Indian standards of respect their national symbol – their flag.

The Indian flag has a strange and checkered past in this regard. While the flag is clearly a symbol of national pride and solidarity, citizens of India were legally not allowed to fly their own national flag for a long time. The reasoning behind this quirk in Indian law is unclear. Various flags were used as banners during India’s struggle for Independence. A natural assumption would have been that the flag chosen for the country belonged to all and every Indian citizen had earned the right to fly it with pride and dignity. Unfortunately, possibly due to egalitarian and centralist interests, this was not so. Naveen Jindal, an Indian industrialist questioned this quirk and flew the Indian flag in top of the office building in Delhi in 2001. He was then told that he could not do so; the flag was confiscated and he was told that he could prosecuted for the strange crime of publicly displaying pride and respect for his own country. Jindal, a man of resources, filed a public interest litigation which lead to the case being moved to the Supreme Court. A special Governmental committee was set up to consider the matter and in 2002, the Indian National Flag code was amended to allow flags to be flown by all citizens as long as the accord it the dignity it deserves.

It is a matter of some thought that Pandey, apparently felt that not being allowed to fly the flag as a citizen was a non issue, since he (with his tremendous desire to see the flag and country accorded respect) did not file that public interest litigation.

If Pandey had done his homework, he would have found that the Flag Code of India had been modified thereafter. The Code allowed citizens to wear the flag within certain restrictions. Those restrictions can be found within the modified code but the general idea is that citizens of India, cheeky cricketers included, are allowed to wear the flag above their waist without having it trail or touch the ground. The spirit of the law would have to hold this to reason and common sense. After all, it would be foolhardy to prosecute someone who while wearing the flag, tripped and thus inadvertently had the flag touch the ground. The cricketers who draped themselves in the tricolor cloth, certainly did not dash to the floor to rub the flag into the dirt. In a sport where Indian players have often been accused of not playing for their country, the members of the squad clearly displayed national pride at the ceremony. Whether the draped flags touching or trailing on the ground inadvertently is a national insult is a matter of discretion of a judge. In the opinion of this writer, this part of the issue can be summarily dismissed.

That leaves the issue of champagne which appears to be the lynchpin of the complaint and is probably the most serious issue to address. The Flag Code of India does not specifically mention whether Champaign or any other alcohol can touch the flag or not. It mentions nothing about liquids at all touching the flag. By the letter of the law, Champaign touching the flag is simply a non issue.

If liquids alone were in question here, perhaps we should wonder about water, detergent, cleaning fluids, dyes, rubbing alcohol and dry cleaning in general. If none of these liquids were allowed to touch the Indian flag, one may have terrible visions of filthy, dry and discolored flags all over India. That would perhaps be a greater insult to the dignity of the symbol in question than any other issue. No… all liquids are not in question here… merely alcohol popularly meant for consumption.

In simple terms, it appears that Rahul Pandey, litigant extraordinaire, has accorded moral value to liquor, since he believes, despite their being no clear laws in this regard, that liquor touching the flag is an insult. Pandey’s moral policing makes this the most serious issue in his petition. As a citizen in a democracy, he is welcome to believe anything he wants to believe and lead his life in any way that he so chooses, as long as it does not impinge on the lives of others. If one were to side with Pandey’s conservative ideas on liquor consumption and flag touching, one would have to think of liquor as evil. This would discount historical evidence and anecdotes of liquor being consumed for long periods in history both in celebration and sadness in India and many other parts of the world. Even today liquor is consumed in most parts of India. Drinking is a historically acceptable human activity. One may argue about the scientific evidence that liquor does damage to people who drink or social evidence of drunken driving and wife beating by drunkards. The arguments would be illogical since most people who drink do not drive drunk or beat their wives (assuming gender bias in drinking which is also false) In other words, banning liquor because some people who drink misbehave, would be similar to banning sports because some people who watch them misbehave and damage property (English Football crowds) if their teams win or lose. (While the attempt to ban sports and sports broadcasts for these reasons has indeed been brought up in modern times, the idea has been more or less laughed at in places where it has)

As for the medical issues including liver damage, alcohol poisoning and addiction, one must be reminded that human beings chose to do many things, besides drinking, which may do damage to them. It is a fundamental human right to do so.

The greatest issue to be considered is that in between and despite the arguments, the hiccups and projectile vomiting, people enjoy their drinks. The truth is just that simple.

Pandey is welcome to his private moral umbrage over this issue but by taking it to court he is trying to legalize his personal morality in the overwhelming face of patterns of human activity. By starting this litigation, he is attempting to bring the law into the privacy of my living room and my liquor cabinet. He is simply not welcome there.

This issue is brought up here to warn and discourage us all from moral policing, especially in a country where marauding moral vigilantes try to ban Valentine’s Day, frown on holding hands and kissing in public, dictate what meats one may or may not eat and frown upon alcohol consumption, all in the name of moral purity and upholding women’s rights while completely forgetting that exponentially more sexually based offences are committed in parts of the country which have not heard of Valentine’s Day.

Rahul Pandey deserves his day in court as per the tenets of a democracy. Most of his claims should and probably will be dismissed, as they do not violate the Flag Code in spirit and only nominally violate them by the letter. If he truly believes in taking offence based on whether liquor touched the flag or not, he is setting up a dangerous precedent for attempts to legalize private morality. If so he should be punished for attempting to morally police people. If he does not believe in this apparent liquor based atrocity and is using this litigation as a means to garner publicity, then he deserves to be punished for wasting the court’s time and resources. I suspect the latter is more likely but also hope in vain for the former.

Life and Death at the 11th Hour

If we were to try and simplify the history of human society into broad opposites like good and bad or life and death, good would link to life and bad would link to death. The conceptual contrasts are psychologically, morally and socially linked. Countless texts talk about good emperors who gave life or spared it and bad ones who took it wantonly. Wickedly bad wolves were destructive as they blew down houses and gobbled up innocent and good pigs. Good pied pipers rid cities of bad plague filled rodent infestations leading to the good lives of townspeople. Good kings defended kingdoms of life with magical swords and bad Darth Vaders created Death Stars to vanquish life and create death. Thus with Tarzan-speak like simplicity, “Life good and death bad.”

However upon inspection, that crystal clear water of definitions gets muddied. When we think of death as bad we are obviously not thinking of natural death but what we would call unnatural death. In other words, in our simple realm, if one were to die of old age, happily in bed, a great grand parent to 21 little nippers, one would consider that a natural death. An unnatural death would be exemplified by people meeting the business ends of broadswords, not seeing eye-to-eye with guillotines, walking into hidden minefields or being inside airplanes which were struck by lightening over the Atlantic Ocean. While natural and unnatural sound like clean and simple distinctions, they are not so.

Disease makes this even more complicated. If the grandparent in the above mentioned paragraph, died in bed, suffering horribly from liver cancer and degenerative Alzheimer’s disease coupled with recently developed asthma, would that be considered natural or unnatural? Since a tumor is technically part of the body is that considered natural? Is the cause of the tumor what is unnatural? Those causes may range from being accidentally irradiated due to a nuclear meltdown or simply living near a mountain which has naturally magnetic rocks. Does man made become unnatural and not man made remain natural? What if I were to reduce the age of the grandparent in question – would the cancerous tumor become more unnatural then?

I have yet to find clear definitions of natural and unnatural death. I doubt I ever will. But regardless of definition, death is usually painful for the survivors and pain in most cases is considered a negative… a bad if you will. And yet while a negative… death in itself is also a natural thing. At some point in our lives, most of us realize that we will all die some day. It cannot be avoided. It can be delayed. It can potentially be cheaply cheated through cryogenic freezing. But it cannot truly be avoided. Death is simply part of the natural cycle of nature.

In that condition, why we then go to such lengths to try and avoid a natural eventuality is a question for later. My initial argument was simply to understand the lynchpin of a philosophical choice I am about to present.

In our Tarzan like simple jungle-world, we have cleanly called environmental change or global warming a bad. We call it a bad because it eventually leads to death…widespread end of human existence. One may argue about lingering human spirit after but I am not venturing into the realm of religious or new-age philosophies. A few degrees of temperature change, a few inches of water, a few more gases in the atmosphere and conditions for human survival simply don’t exist any more. Weather conditions change and big bad wolf like hurricanes blow our cities down. Pied piper like flood waters lead to mass drowning. Human survivor migrants wander around looking for magical kingdom like solutions to their problems.

Despite my vivid imagery, I can assure you, I have read the books. I have heard the scientists and I believe them. Global warming is happening. As a race, in my opinion, we are currently veering towards ecological and humanitarian disasters.

Some may talk of Noah’s ark saving the true believers in the end and God’s wrath destroying wicked unbelievers through global warming. Good luck to them on surviving on that ark with no other humans around. If their sense of religious morality is derived from catastrophic genocide then our paths differ so violently that I cannot even present a counterargument.

A pipsqueak in this audience may raise his hand and ask cheekily whether this global warming is actually a “natural” effect, blaming sun spots and wobbles in the Earth’s axis. Before we bombard this pipsqueak with statistics and studies… I would ask him why he was worried about the words “natural” and “unnatural” as outlined by the first part of this essay. This pipsqueak should come to the same conclusion regardless of whether this is “natural” or “unnatural.”

If it is “unnatural” then we as humans are causing it, and thus shouldn’t we change the course of things to prevent this global warming?

If it is “natural” then we as humans are not causing it, and thus shouldn’t we try and change the course of things to try and do whatever we can to prevent this global warming?

Or should we?

What seems like a natural answer becomes unnatural when one waxes philosophical. If death is an eventuality, then in all probability, the human race has to face extinction at some point of time. Why not face it sooner rather than later, gorging down on our fat and luxuries, regurgitating and consuming more and more, like the vainglorious citizens of Rome. We would exist as a race, bathed and swabbed in every environmentally destructive luxury we can think off, to die in a while like glorious fireworks in the night sky. Philosophically, I have yet to find fault with this exit.

One of my great annoyances with those who talk about environment change is that they have usually not considered the philosophical alternatives and present arguments as absolutes thus simplifying everything into Tarzan like “good and bad.”

Did it appear from my philosophical rant that my stand was wavering? It is not. I simply prefer to think of all the possibilities and take active choices thereof. This philosophy is not for me.

This evening, I had the privilege of watching a private screening of “11^th Hour” which is a documentary about environmental change narrated and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and others. One of the first things I liked about this movie was that it presented the choices appropriately. The abstract and simplistic “good and bad” concepts were simply not mentioned. Instead it stuck to the simple choice of death and extinction vs. not. This kind of clarity in presentation is necessary because without it, the waters get muddied with logic challenged emotional arguments which fall into the cracks created by those who wantonly pollute.

This strength of the movie which centered on various intellectuals presenting logical, intelligent, scientific and intellectual points is also in my opinion, its great weakness. I have often blamed other presentations for veering from the facts and steering towards emotion, but this one does not. While the facts and ideas impressed me, it is my opinion that to win over people, arguments are better tipped on an emotional plane. If mere logic and intellect impressed us as a people, why would we listen to the music of pied piper like intellectually-challenged politicians and logic-challenged corporate-sponsored arguments? Wouldn’t we have already stopped following the piper and started forcing change en-masse to avoid drowning?

The movie’s dire warnings were more or less believable. It even offered happy and hopeful solutions at the end. (This fairy tale marred by wolves, pigs and flute bearing villains does have a happy ending – yaaay)

Some of the people who spoke and presented in the movie, offered good ideas and some of the visuals were powerful and interesting. Yet other design visuals were weak, thus leading to my next gripe.

Often, people who claim they work for the environment fall into the trap of following cool ideas and powerful buzzwords. Somehow some people just don’t like to read, think or research. Present the product with the word green on it and they smile. Paste the words organic and green on a bottle made of plastic filled with pure CFC and they dance with joy.

As a design professional, I don’t know whether to be amused or despair when I am presented with a glass box tower which claims to be an environmentally friendly building, earning its environmental credits by using chemically treated double paneled glass with high pressure gas between panels reduce heat gain. Apparently this specialized glass used no harmful chemicals to create it. There were no byproducts, waste or effluent and the high pressure gas inside got in between the panels with some encouragement from the loving Mom while baking apple pies. Indeed, this was EXACTLY what was presented to us after the movie. I wonder if we could apply the same standard to medicine. Perhaps for a common cold, a doctor could prescribe a treatment which would first lead the patient to hemorrhage massively and then prescribe a small dose of Vitamin K to help with the clotting? I am surprised that none of the other panelists saw the irony.

Sometimes rhetoric just beats common sense, especially as I mentioned before, if the rhetoric is well packaged and labeled organic.

Unfortunately I also know all too well, the forces of commerce. Loft like, sunshine bathed, airy spaces with great views sell well and developers and realtors (who could NEVER be called greedy) wouldn’t dream of reducing their well earned profits for the space for piddly concepts like doing the right thing.

Indeed, who amongst us is willing to take that financial hit, a condition the movie so aptly described? Far too many of us somehow believe that doing the right thing should cost less. We apparently require tax credits to build better. I have been told that energy efficient cars are not going to be the rage until they cost less than petrol vehicles. Besides… what do I, a public transport using denizen of ordinariness know about cars anyway?

Many of those involved in these industries are the most educated, erudite, well spoken and intelligent people around. When will I be able to change their opinions and make them or their companies take the financial hit? ... Perhaps as someone disgustingly described to me - “When their babies are born as fried omelets fetuses due to global warming and pollution.”

The movie spoke of lifestyle change which is one of the primary components in solving this problem and encouraged a grassroots movement. Apparently the screening itself was an underground way of “spreading the word” which we were asked to do. I am dutifully doing that here and now. While the movie’s trailer and website were interesting, a link on the website made for better reading - http://www.11thhouraction.com/

For those who do not like endless intellectual and logical arguments, this movie is simply not for you… but then neither is what I have written here. I shouldn’t try and confuse you with logic and evidence.

For myself, I believe in deep introspection, lifestyle change and grassroots actions. Perhaps I am part of that movement here and now, demanding corporate change, transparency, social justice and well thought out environmental policy. And for the rest who do not want to listen – for those big bad polluting wolves trying to dump effluent down my chimney, I am waiting patiently in my brick house with my baseball bat.

What and Why

Several years ago, a friend of mine invited me into an ongoing conversation at a bar counter in a restaurant about the differences between a blog and a diary. I was eagerly presented as an expert of all things media and specifically the internet. While I had some experience and interest for several years in media studies, this pedestal on which I was presented was inherently false. I was by no means an expert. I certainly did not have a degree in the subject. In fact I considered media in general and the internet specifically to be too vast as subjects for any individuals to be named “THE expert.” The truth was, my friend, already somewhat inebriated was probably trying to prove a point and would have presented me as the crown prince of the internet if that would have forwarded his argument. I wanted to shrug away the discussion at that point but subject intrigued me.

At that time, despite my interest in the media, blogging as a concept made me feel like I had fallen behind the technology curve. In theory I knew what a blog was and had a read a few of them, but despite media reports to the contrary and all the buzz and excitement, I simply did not see them as anything of real value. My mind was full of the questions, many of which are still valid today.

Why would anyone want to blog? Why would people take time out of their lives to talk about themselves or express ideas to other random unknown individuals? Who is listening or reading? Who cares about this stuff? Am I really interested in the potentially misinformed opinions and deeply boring life of a pimply teenager living out of his dingy basement in Romania (Romania being replaceable by any other country here)? Why would anyone care? Why are people saying that this could change the world when I cannot see a single global problem solvable through a blog? In a world where talk is cheap and action is rare, do blogs increase the talk and reduce the action?

With many people simply talking about their lives online, blogs appeared at one time, to have become a means of cheap voyeurism. People were simply reading the regularly updated diaries of others. Those who chose to write became the exhibitionists and the readers became global voyeurs sitting in their comfortable chairs, keeping their distance behind sobriquets selected on electronic networks, reading, taking notes and occasionally offering commentary. I knew of others who blogged to keep their friends abreast of their activities but here again, I could not see the value of blogging within this purpose, as opposed to sending out mass e-mails or even updated Christmas cards with life stories. There are of course, a limited number of blogs which far exceed this framework. Arianna Huffington’s blog comes to mind, but at this point, I would scarcely call her effort a mere blog anymore.

My question to myself was - Why would people think of themselves as important enough to be heard and read on any medium?

Also extending the diary and blog argument - Would that make “The Diary of Anne Frank” merely an archived blog? Who was I after all to be privy to the life of the young Anne Frank? In almost blog like fashion, her diary was updated to the point of hearing the footsteps of soldiers walking up to her family’s hiding place in Amsterdam, leaving me, the voyeur-reader wrenched and terrified for her. Her diary-blog was, like many blogs on the internet, stalled when events in her life no longer allowed her to make entries; events which lead to her tragic death with so many others during the second world war.

And yet Anne Frank’s diary is vastly read. It has now become a beloved book and a marker of her time and place. She has become important.

Infact, this example alone answers some questions. Blogs are different from diaries because they are for the most part, current. They are usually not read post mortem.

They also allow two other things which diaries do not allow. They allow “feedback,” which in some ways is the miracle of the internet. On the internet, through forums, blogs and so many others means, people can read, think and comment, both intelligently and stupidly to any and all entries, altering both the context and content of the original posts. They also allow something which Anne Frank did not get – they allow the individuals, through their words, to become powerful and important in their own time. The internet makes “spreading the word” ludicrously easy. This individual power is amorphous, not physical. Words in themselves have power and personal expression through those words is also powerful.

I also believe that in a funny way, the collective of blogs will become a marker of this time and place, just as Anne Frank’s diary became of hers.

I certainly do not consider myself important enough to be read. For this reason alone, I avoided writing a blog for the longest time, despite friends who tried to convince me otherwise. But like many people, I have “thoughts” – funny, stupid, intelligent, illogical, intellectual, angry and everything else thoughts. What use are those thoughts, even to me, if they are not occasionally noted down? And even when noted down, they serve no purpose except smug self satisfaction if they are not aired. When aired, they become self expression. Blogs champion this cause and self expression shines through.

Since I believe that words have power and self expression shines through, I started this blog. – a simple means of self expression. I shall try and steer away from boring life stories about my visits to the beach, backyard barbeques and bad bosses. I hope to avoid this being a mere verbal exhibition about my life. My life is simply too ordinary and I am too unimportant to be interesting. Instead, I intend to start only with ideas and thoughts. I do not know the value of reading my ideas, but knowing the internet, I know that they will probably be read – by someone somewhere - maybe even by the pimply teenager in Romania who will read what I write, only to raise his fists to the screen and cuss violently in a language I do not understand.

I wanted a blog name to reflect my respect for the ability of the internet to spread information and ideas like wild fire – thus my somewhat self indulgent title, Thoughtfire. I wanted my name to reflect the amorphousness of the medium, defying gender, race, age and true definition – Urban. I have no delusions of grandeur. I do not intend to solve any global problems through this blog. I know I have not started something big…. but here, with this reflective post, I have happily started something small.