| Should we really take our national flag seriously? After all it is only a rectangular piece of dyed cloth with a stitched hem at one end, and a simple design of a star cradled in the curve of a rising moon. Why should we give it any importance at all? One might go a daring step further. Might it not be kinder to exempt visiting dignitaries from having to bow their heads in respect before our standard, when we who are responsible for maintaining it aloft have ourselves by our actions depreciated its significance? What value does a national flag have anyway? |
| “The flag of every nation is not merely a piece of cloth” Nawabzada (later Quaid-e-Millat) Liaquat Ali Khan informed the members of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 while presenting the proposed national flag of the new state of Pakistan to them. “It is not really the cloth that matters, but what it stands for, and I can say without fear of contradiction that this Flag….will stand for freedom, liberty and equality.” |
Published in THE NATION 8 October 1992, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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