With the Court order of playing National Anthem in theaters and making it mandatory for the audience to stand up as a token of respect while the Anthem is being played, new issues have been created for the theaters to handle. There were two cases filed so far in Chennai and Kerala with regards to this new law.
A group of people was taken into custody by police yesterday at International Film Festival of Kerala for not standing up while the National Anthem is played after which a mob protested against the arrest, with placards displaying a message that, Nationalism cannot be imposed and this is not the right way to teach patriotism.
Another incident took place on Sunday in a Chennai theater where 20 people attacked a group of about 7 people, for not paying respect to the Anthem. One out of the 20 attackers complained that they were disrespectful towards the National Anthem and were taking selfies seated in their chairs while the song was being played with National flag on the screen. On the other side, the people who have been assaulted say that they were not taking selfies but have not stood up as they don’t agree with this law to play National Anthem in places like Cinema halls.
The ones who got arrested for disobeying the law were let go, after a counseling on patriotism. With these incidents, it is shown that, whether or not the law is promoting patriotism in people, it is surely raising new problems to the theaters and the undesired effort for police.
