{"id":2815,"date":"2007-08-15T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T03:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200708\/the-nation-and-the-anthem\/"},"modified":"2007-08-15T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T03:31:00","slug":"the-nation-and-the-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200708\/the-nation-and-the-anthem\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nation and the Anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some time back, there was a furore because Narayana Murthy played the instrumental version of the National Anthem because singing it aloud would embarrass Infosys’ foreign employees. I suspect that the actual reason was that Murthy<\/em> gets embarrassed by overt displays of patriotism, just as he would get embarrassed by overt displays of any strong emotions. This embarrassment would be all the more in the presence of foreigners, just as any strange practices at your house would make you squirm all the more when outsiders are present. <\/p>\n

This makes Murthy a bit of a bore, like some people who,when they watch cricket matches, clap politely, but refuse to take part in Mexican waves. In my young days, such people used to be given the bums. We also used to call them traitors, but we weren’t serious. Those who jumped on Murthy were. There was no question of accepting a charitable explanation for his words. The only possible explanation was that his words betrayed his servile attitude to foreigners, and this made him unfit to be the country’s president. Of course, considering who was elected eventually, it is probably true that Murthy was in fact unfit for the post. <\/p>\n

Incidentally, who came to your mind when Murthy mentioned “foreigners”? <\/p>\n

Americans? <\/p>\n

Would your reaction be any different if the foreigners in question were Sri Lankans? <\/p>\n

Those foreigners were actually employees. Being nice to your employees and to make allowance for their sensibilities is generally considered a sign of magnanimity. I can understand the criticism that Murthy went overboard on this, but to take it as a sign of servility<\/em>, suggests that the problem lay more in his critics’ mind than in his. <\/p>\n

I work with Bank of America<\/a>. My employer’s branding exercise takes its identity as an American company quite seriously. The company’s logo is derived from the American flag. The corporate colours are red and blue, from the same flag. The company’s logo is “Bank of Opportunity”, which echoes “Land of Opportunity”. The company’s induction programme harks back to its links with American founding fathers. <\/p>\n

But the fact is, these connections are made in an understated way. The need for understatement comes from relative strength. If you are are the powerful guy, being subtle is a better way to convey your values. If you are secure in your power, you don’t need to convey power. <\/p>\n

If citizens of a country are prone to singing the Anthem aloud, looking around to see who is not singing it and using this non-singing as evidence of insufficient patriotism, it indicates a very insecure country to me. If you use the singing of your anthem loud to demonstrate your position in the power game, it is more likely that you are the weaker party. <\/p>\n

The furore, if it demonstrated anything, showed us the extent of the chasm between Murthy’s image of India and his critics’ image of India – between those who think that it goes without saying that India is an equal member of the community of nations and those who think that India still needs to demonstrate it. As India turns sixty, I note with satisfaction that the former image is truer to reality than the latter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some time back, there was a furore because Narayana Murthy played the instrumental version of the National Anthem because singing it aloud would embarrass Infosys’ foreign employees. I suspect that the actual reason was that Murthy gets embarrassed by overt displays of patriotism, just as he would get embarrassed by overt displays of any strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}