Panel looking into anthem protocol checks rules in other nations

In the backdrop of the recent communal violence in Kasganj, in UP, the panel will take up incidents related to violence over playing of national anthem or hoisting of the flag before recommending any penal amendments in its next meeting, officials said. Clashes in Kasganj, allegedly over the right of way for a group on a “Tiranga bike rally”, left one dead and at least two others injured.

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The inter-ministerial group is expected to hold its second meeting in February.

The protocol followed by some of the countries which came up during discussion are Australia, Japan, the United States, Italy and Russia, according to officials.

While Russia has stringent provisions to punish anyone insulting the national anthem, it is customary in Australia to stand up whenever the anthem is played at a ceremony or public event, although event organisers can choose when the anthem is played.

The panel has 11 other members.

In the US, there are legal codes that apply to flag etiquette, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the national anthem. But there is no precedence to discipline US citizens for failing to stand up for the anthem.

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In Italy, it is not mandatory to play the national anthem in schools or other public places. The anthem is played only during sports events and at formal state ceremonies. There are no fixed protocols while the national anthem is being played. Citizens are required to stand and show respect to the anthem.

Japan’s national anthem, ‘Kimi Ga Yo’, is about its Emperor, and in the past school teachers who refused to stand in protest, as the song is associated with the country’s militarist past, were fined.

Under the Prevention of Insult of National Honour Act, 1971, an Indian may be imprisoned for up to three years for trying to disrupt or prevent singing of the national anthem.

The committee headed by Special Secretary Brij Raj Sharma, a Jammu and Kashmir-cadre IAS officer and currently in charge of Border Management in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), has been mandated to “frame the guidelines describing circumstances and occasion on which the national anthem is to be played or sung”. Among the committee’s terms of reference is “observance of proper decorum when national anthem in played or sung.”

The panel has 11 other members, mostly joint secretary-level officers from the Ministries of Defence, External Affairs, Women and Child Development, HRD, Culture, Parliamentary Affairs, Law, Minority Affairs, Information and Broadcasting and the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.

The Supreme Court had set a deadline of six months for the committee to come up with the detailed guidelines.