The Indian government had decided in order to cultivate a spirit of patriotism among its citizens to play the national song before the start of a film in cinema halls of the country. When the song was being played, the audience was expected to stand silently.\u00a0The move was welcomed but like any other decision of the government, it created a controversy. Some people said that they had come to enjoy a film in the cinema houses and not to participate in some political event; others said that their religion did not allow them and so on. Now the situation is a fluid one. The Indian Supreme Court has decided that playing of the Anthem is not mandatory and has left it to the cinemas to decide whether to play it or not.<\/p>\n
Another unusual protest against a national Anthem has come to light. This one is a protest by a nine-year-old schoolgirl named Harper Nielsen. She has refused to stand when the Australian national anthem \u2018Advance Australia Fair\u2019 was being sung in the school. The objection to the song according to the child is because it disregards the vast indigenous populations of Australia by the words \u2018we are young and free\u2019 when the country was colonised by the British and the song was sung as its anthem. It is estimated that the original populations had been living in Australia for the last 50 thousand years or thereabouts.<\/p>\n
It is well known that the indigenous peoples or aboriginals as they are often called, and their cultures and languages have been almost wiped out by the colonial powers \u2014 be it America or Australia. The colonial powers not only had several means to overpower weak\u00a0 indigenous peoples not only by weaponry but also by introducing diseases such as small pox against which these people had no recourse.<\/p>\n
In Australia, the population of the aboriginal tribal people was about 2.8 percent of the total population in 2016. These people now largely speak English and have acquired Christianity since their original faiths could not match the ascendancy of the religion of the colonial masters. In New Zealand also several indigenous peoples were decimated but fortunately the Maori tribe was not victimised much and the Maori language has become a second official language,\u00a0along with English.<\/p>\n
What is hard to believe in the case of the Australian schoolgirl\u00a0is how such a young child can think in terms of the country\u2019s tribal peoples who have suffered tremendously by the colonial power. Despite some politicians who wanted her to be expelled from the school, this was not done. Harper was not victimised by throwing her out of the school by the school principal, but a compromise was arrived at in consultation with child\u2019s parents of allowing Harper to go out to a different room when the anthem was being sung in the school.<\/p>\n
Her protest may appear\u00a0ineffective in view of the history of colonialism in Australia,\u00a0USA and other places but it is symbolic of the injustice and cruelty heaped by the Powers That Be on weak people. This is happening in the world today in one form or another. Let us strengthen our resolve to stand against cruelty and any other form of injustice.<\/p>\n
______________________________________________<\/p>\n
Most countries have national anthems or songs that are sung on official functions of the country \u2014 Independence Day, Republic Day, at international sports events, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":70777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/em>Dr Ravi P Bhatia <\/em>is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>, an<\/em> educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University.\u00a0 ravipbhatia@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"