Tottering  Flags
Thursday, May 19, 2022
  • Circulation
  • Advertise
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
Organiser
  • ‌
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Editorial
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Defence
  • Sports
  • Business
  • More
    • RSS in News
    • Special Report
    • Culture
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • Education
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Health
    • Obituary
SUBSCRIBE
No Result
View All Result
Organiser
  • ‌
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Editorial
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Defence
  • Sports
  • Business
  • More
    • RSS in News
    • Special Report
    • Culture
    • Sci & Tech
    • Entertainment
    • Education
    • Books
    • Interviews
    • Travel
    • Health
    • Obituary
No Result
View All Result
Organiser
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Culture
  • Defence
  • RSS in News
  • Subscribe
Home General

Tottering  Flags

Archive Manager by Archive Manager
Oct 9, 2017, 12:00 am IST
in General
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterTelegramEmail

Wagah Retreat : Untamed Tempers


It is a dramatic war of sorts every day at the Waghah Border, which makes the jawans of the BSF and the Pakistan Rangers look comical, at times

Ajay Bhardwaj from Wagah Border

Every day there is a veritable war between Bharat and Pakistan in Amritsar at the Wagha Border where the Retreat ceremony takes place. It is a “war” of tempers, a “war’ of dramatics, a “war” of patriotic slogan-shouting, a “war” of feet thumping during the parade, a “war” of whipping up nationalistic feelings on both the sides of the border.
 The cacophony that pierces the sky at the daily Retreat ceremony does not just rattle the otherwise quiet Indo-Pak border but arouses passions on both sides of the border which is being questioned by the locals now. The propriety and the necessity of it all.

In their zeal to compete on the Wagha Border, India and Pakistan have lately locked horns on their respective towering national flags.
On the Indian side, a flag post pitched on the new stadium takes the national flag to dizzy heights of 360 feet, which the flag has been unable to bear. In the last over a year, the flag has got torn and shredded at least a dozen times. In fact, once it even caught fire after touching sparks of a nearby electricity wire.
While the Indian side has been struggling to keep the national flag aloft at the pole, the Pakistan national flag pitched a notch higher at 410 feet has faced its problems no less.
But both sides, as of now,  are determined not to make mends even though it calls for repeated change of flags which are unable to bear the onslaught of winds.

Gursharan Singh, a leading local trader, recently pointed out to the BSF authorities that the ceremony should be conducted gracefully and be shorn off aggression attached to it. “Though it helps to whip up nationalist feelings in the face of the enemy land, yet building up unnecessary tension every day is pointless”, he said.
Even the BSF officials have their reservations over the aggressive postures synthetically adopted during the half an hour exercise. Besides banging the border gates so loudly, the BSF jawans have now started adopting a new posture of arms muscle flexing facing eyeball to eyeball with the Pakistan Rangers. The blustering parade on both sides of the border, which involves aggressive thumping of feet after lifting them head-high, is another hallmark of the ceremony that sees the crowd indulging in loud cheering and slogan shouting.
Special Training
The jawans are trained specially for this parade keeping their height and body-structure in mind. But the converse part of it is that it has caused serious knee injuries to more than a dozen BSF jawans in the recent past, some of whom have even left the job after knee injuries.
There have been erratic attempts on both the sides of the border to tone down the exercise, but they have met with no success. “Some of the senior BSF officials had mooted the idea in the past, but, perhaps, in view of the public pressure it could not be executed”, said a senior official. In 2010, the then Major General Yaqub Ali Khan of the Pakistan Rangers had also decided that the aggressive aspect of the ceremonial theatrics should be toned down, but nothing much happened on the ground. The idea came after an incident in which a BSF jawan and a Pakistan Rangers jawan had aimed their guns at each other.
Theatrics Aglore
In fact, over the years the ceremony has become more theatrical. Among the added features is the sword-wielding BSF commander who overlooks the ceremony,  the dance of visitors close to the border gate to the tune of patriotic songs holding aloft the national flag and construction of an imposing stadium overlooking the Indo-Pak border in order to increase the sitting capacity of visitors.  In addition, one sees a BSF man, in plain clothes, running around urging onlookers to raise the pitch of their voice while shouting nationalistic slogans. The Retreat ceremony, which basically involves lowering of the national flags on both sides of the border at the sunset, started in 1959 but has been disrupted many times as the tension between Bharat and Pakistan escalates. Besides the war times in 1965 and 1971, the Retreat was put on hold even during the Kargil war days and recently in September and October last year, people on the Indian side were kept off the border due to the tension in J&K.
Gaining Popularity
Regardless of periodic disruptions, the retreat ceremony these days is a major tourist attraction that sees, on an average, 10,000 to 15,000 viewers coming from across the country flocking the border every day. The ceremony ends with a retreat that involves a brusque handshake between soldiers from either side, followed by the closing of the gates again. The spectacle of the ceremony attracts a large number of overseas visitors as well. The number has increased manifold in the recent years indicating the overwhelming interest of the people, especially those from other states, to see the Indo-Pak border and the theatrics.  

 

ShareTweetSendShareSend
Previous News

Sino-India Stand-Off : Taking on the Dragon

Next News

Editorial : Conserve the Core

Related News

Hindus and other minorities face violent attacks on streets: CDPHR report on religious discrimination in US

Hindus and other minorities face violent attacks on streets: CDPHR report on religious discrimination in US

EAM S Jaishankar Hitting back hard: India schooling the biased West

EAM S Jaishankar highlights eight key points during BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting

Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque case tomorrow

Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque case tomorrow

1,224 KM long Amritsar Jalandhar Highway Targeted To Be Completed by September 2023: Nitin Gadkari

1,224 KM long Amritsar Jalandhar Highway Targeted To Be Completed by September 2023: Nitin Gadkari

Egypt approves India as a wheat supplier, announces Union Minister Piyush Goyal

India defends ‘wheat export’ ban, says it always helped ‘partners in distress’

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann meets Amit Shah, discusses farmers and drone issues

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann meets Amit Shah, discusses farmers and drone issues

Comments

The comments posted here/below/in the given space are not on behalf of Organiser. The person posting the comment will be in sole ownership of its responsibility. According to the central government's IT rules, obscene or offensive statement made against a person, religion, community or nation is a punishable offense, and legal action would be taken against people who indulge in such activities.

Latest News

Hindus and other minorities face violent attacks on streets: CDPHR report on religious discrimination in US

Hindus and other minorities face violent attacks on streets: CDPHR report on religious discrimination in US

EAM S Jaishankar Hitting back hard: India schooling the biased West

EAM S Jaishankar highlights eight key points during BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting

Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque case tomorrow

Supreme Court to hear Gyanvapi mosque case tomorrow

1,224 KM long Amritsar Jalandhar Highway Targeted To Be Completed by September 2023: Nitin Gadkari

1,224 KM long Amritsar Jalandhar Highway Targeted To Be Completed by September 2023: Nitin Gadkari

Egypt approves India as a wheat supplier, announces Union Minister Piyush Goyal

India defends ‘wheat export’ ban, says it always helped ‘partners in distress’

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann meets Amit Shah, discusses farmers and drone issues

Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann meets Amit Shah, discusses farmers and drone issues

PM Modi to attend Quad Summit in Tokyo on May 24

PM Modi to attend Quad Summit in Tokyo on May 24

Universities should not be the arena of ideological battle: Amit Shah

Universities should not be the arena of ideological battle: Amit Shah

Digitisation helps significantly in ease of doing business for MSMEs: Survey

Digitisation helps significantly in ease of doing business for MSMEs: Survey

Indian cinema plays key role & has portrayed country’s fight for independence: Anurag Thakur

Indian cinema plays key role & has portrayed country’s fight for independence: Anurag Thakur

  • Circulation
  • Advertise
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Bharat
  • World
  • Editorial
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Defence
  • Culture
  • Sports
  • Business
  • RSS in News
  • Special Report
  • Sci & Tech
  • Entertainment
  • Education
  • Books
  • Interviews
  • Travel
  • Health
  • Obituary
  • Subscribe
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Circulation
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

© Bharat Prakashan (Delhi) Limited.
Tech-enabled by Ananthapuri Technologies