Do we really know our national anthem?

We may not know all the words, but we mean everything they represent.

Blogs Desk August 13, 2016
In celebration of Independence Day, we went around asking people to recite the national anthem. As we went about trying to instill a patriotic fervour amongst the people by making them sing the national anthem, we were not surprised that many were overtaken by either shyness or disinterest as they shrugged us away and walked off.

But, for the rest that did take part, it was amusing that a vast majority fumbled on the words – making the experience as adorable as it was cringe-worthy (for all of us). There were only a handful who we can confidently claim knew their national anthem by heart.

We had quite interesting encounters; Fayyaz Hussain began the anthem by singing “dil, dil Pakistan”. Karim Sohani, aged 50, had returned to Pakistan after 30 years of living in America and confidently/proudly belted out the national anthem, being very well aware that the anthems chronology was a concept absolutely lost on him. Little Fizza happily volunteered to recite the anthem, knowing no words at all and yet, with her mother’s assistance, recited the entire national anthem as mumbles and sounds. Elderly Mehrunnisa could not speak properly, yet spoke the words of the national anthem at our request.

We all may not know the national anthem fluently or by heart, but that doesn’t take away from the loyalty and passion we feel for our country.

We may not know all the words, but we mean everything they represent.
WRITTEN BY:
Blogs Desk The Express Tribune Blogs desk.
The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.

COMMENTS (7)

Anushe | 5 years ago | Reply Disagree completely. It’s the national anthem folks! Please do not discount its importance by making it ‘ok’ to just hum along. Like someone said down thread, we are great with remembering Hindi songs by heart but when it come to something which should be our primary source of national pride, we come up with all sorts of excuses. Being in Farsi is not an excuse- the Indian national song for decades was sarey Jahan set acha- penned by Iqbal and entirely in Urdu, and there was never any excuse made by the Indian population to not sing it or adopt it as their military tune. This is more a sign of the general laziness and abandonment of the Urdu language. Y Pakistanis. Owing to our multitude of news channels spewing sub standard Urdu and Roman phrases of English words, the new generation is acutely unaware of proper Urdu usage. Hence please do not discount a higher problem by saying it’s ok. It certainly is not!
AN | 7 years ago | Reply See this. Gana jana mana by an American in Philly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgsebusJO8Y
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