The Tudikhel open ground in central Kathmandu is transformed into a large flag holder as 35,000 Nepalese break the world record for the biggest human flag – 23 August 2014 – Photo by AFP/Getty Images
If there’s one thing (many) South Asian nations have in abundance, it’s people. Now, countries of this populous region are competing to hold the world record in an unusual phenomenon called the human national flag.
On 23 August 2014, more than 35,000 Nepalese came together in Kathmandu’s city centre to form the world’s largest “human national flag”. The feat was best seen from the air, and had a special visual significance too: the Himalayan nation has the world’s only flag which is not a quadrilateral (it’s made up of two triangles).
The exercise was billed as an effort to ‘unite the hearts of Nepal’. As seen from the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/events/1521476671414710/), it entailed plenty of preparation. Unless you’re in North Korea, getting thousands of people to perform an act of mass coordination isn’t easy.
If Guinness World Records accepts this claim based on photographic and video evidence, Nepal will replace Pakistan as current record holder. On 15 February 2014, a total of 28,957 people came together at the National Hockey Stadium in Lahore to make up their flag during Punjab Youth Festival 2014. http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/2000/largest-human-national-flag
On 5 February 2014, a total of 28,957 Pakistanis came together at the National Hockey Stadium in Lahore to create their national flag
Pakistanis beat Bangladesh to this record. A total of 27,117 volunteers, mostly students, stood up with red and green blocks to form their flag at the National Parade Ground in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka on 16 December 2013. They stood there for 6 minutes 16 seconds, though the requirement for setting a new world record was 5 minutes.
Bangladesh human national flag created at the National Parade Ground in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka on 16 December 2013. Photo by Shahidul Alam/Drik News
So here’s a chance for Sri Lanka’s patriots to literally fly their flag into a world record. Of course, coordinating the creation of the Lion Flag will be more demanding (making up Pakistani and Bangladeshi flags is relatively easier than Nepal’s).
Journalist Kanak Dixit in a protesting rally in Kathmandu on 5 April 2006, Kathmandu. Photo by Shehab Uddin
Expanded from introductory remarks at Ceylon Newspapers Limited office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 2 Aug 2012:
There are many ways to introduce my good friend and partner in crime, Kanak Mani Dixit.
Aunty Google, as well as his own website (www.kanakmanidixit.com) can tell you the basic info about his education and career path, which I won’t repeat here. Instead, let me personalise what I know about this courageous man I’ve known and worked with for over 15 years.
Kanak is a journalist, editor and activist – all rolled into one. And if you think that journalists cannot become effective social or democracy activists, just watch him balance these seemingly daunting roles. Study how he juggles reporting, commentary writing, editing and social intervention.
Kanak came from a privileged family background, and could easily have spent his life in leisurely scholarship and endlessly doing the cocktail and conference circuits in South Asia and beyond. He CHOSE to be different.
Kanak spent a few years with the UN Department of Public Information in New York, and yet chucked up a promising international career to return to South Asia – a chaotic, unpredictable but also exhilarating part of the world that we call home. Another conscious choice.
Back home, Kanak could have watched over his beloved Kathmandu Valley and simply commented or satirised about the politics, economy and society of his impoverished land, one of 49 least developed countries in the world. He does that, too, but when needed he takes to the streets. As he did back in 2005/2006 when Nepalis rose against a tyrannical king…
He paid a price for his frontline activism. He was arrested – along with thousands of others – for defying a curfew and demanding democratic reform. He spent 19 days in a Kathmandu jail that he once pointed out to me from afar. As an influential publisher, he could have worked out some deal for a quicker release, but again, chose not to.
How many other South Asia editors or publishers do you know who won’t peddle influence for their personal gain or safety?
Some editors and publishers think of themselves as ‘king-makers’ in the political arena. This editor-publisher was literally a ‘king-dumper’: Nepal’s People Power forced autocratic King Gyanendra to restore Parliament in April 2006. Two years later, the whole monarchy was phased out.
Kanak has spoken truth to power, stared authority in the eye, and yet he has not allowed himself to be corrupted by the temptations of political, diplomatic or other positions. He continues to critique and needle those in public and elected office.
In fact, the very revolutionaries he too helped to bring into office – through elections – now don’t seem to like him much: he was recently dubbed ‘an Enemy of the People’.
He must be doing a few things right to be reviled by both monarchists and republicans!
But Kanak is much more than a media and political activist. He has too many involvements and interests to keep track of.
To cite but a few: What Himal is all about…• He is a great believer in the idea of South Asian integration, going well beyond the bureaucratic trappings of SAARC. (His Southasia, which he insists on spelling as one word, includes Tibet and Burma.)
• He founded Himal Southasian magazine in 1987, and sustained it for 25 years with great effort and dedication. It is the first and only regional news and analysis magazine in our region of 1.4 billion people.
• He promotes documentaries as a means of cultural self expression and exchange, and in 1997 founded Film South Asia, a biennial festival that brings the best of South Asian films.
• He nurtures social science research and scholarly exchange, and is endlessly incubating new ventures or institutions in the public interest.
• He supports spinal injury rehabilitation in Nepal, having realised the pitiful state of such care when he suffered serious spinal injury himself a few years ago after a mountain hiking accident.
Amidst all this, he finds time to write regular columns and op-eds – in both English AND Nepali – as well as occasional books.
For these and many other reasons, Kanak Dixit is one of my role models, and a constant source of inspiration. He is one of the few human beings that I’d like to CLONE if and when that becomes a real prospect.
We need many more Media Typhoons like him to drive change in South Asia.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if there is more than one Kanak Dixit already! But that’s only speculation. For now, my friends, meet the one and only Kanak Mani Dixit confirmed to exist…
On 20 April 2012, we marked seven years since Saneeya Hussain left us. Journalist and activist Saneeya suffered a needless and tragic death at when she ran out of fresh air in South Asia and was caught up in the urban traffic congestion of Sao Paulo.
In this week’s Ravaya Sunday column, I remember Saneeya’s legacy and plight and discuss the latest dimensions of outdoor air pollution in Sri Lanka that threatens fellow asthma sufferers like myself. The same information is covered in English at: Gasping for Fresh Air, Seeking More Liveable Cities in South Asia
Saneeya Hussain & Nalaka Gunawardene: Singapore, Nov 2002
Vasanthi Hariprakash exploring One Square Mile in Kathmandu, Nepal
It’s funny how, more than a generation after most of the world adopted the metric system of measurements, relics of the earlier, ‘imperial’ units still linger in our language and popular culture.
Frequent flyers stlll accumulate air-miles, not kilometres. Disaster managers grapple with the challenges of communicating credible early warnings on that the crucial ‘last mile’ (it’s not yet the ‘last kilometre’). And many among us, including those who have grown up in a metric world, can better grasp a square mile than a square kilometre.
One Square Mile is also the name of an interesting new TV series produced by One Planet Pictures of the UK, and first airing this month on BBC World News. In this series, reporters visit a neighbourhood in different parts of the developing world and try and find out what the residents’ hopes and aspirations
Says its producer Robert Lamb: “One Square Mile is an experiment. So much in television is set up. In this series our reporters explore a small patch of a city with the aim of providing the viewer with an authentic slice of life.”
According to Robert, One Square Mile takes the lid off a neighbourhood. Reporters wander around a marked out section of a town and city and talk to the people they meet to find out what their everyday concerns are.
Of this months shows, two are presented by Zeinab Badawi . In one, she goes walkabout in Juba, capital of south Sudan which is on the verge of becoming an independent state. In the other, Badawi encounters murder on the streets in Guatemala City.
The other two are presented by my friend Vasanthi Hariprakash, whose day job is with India’s leading TV news network NDTV. These two are of particular interest to me as she travels to countries in Asia that are closer to me in distance and closer to my heart.
In one show, Vasanthi travels to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. The blurb says: “Despite a recent record of political instability that has seen a monarchy overthrown and an uneasy peace struck with the Maoist insurgents, reporter Vasanthi Hariprakash finds a city population surprisingly upbeat. But a long dawn queue outside the passport office tells a different story – young Nepali men are desperate to get out to find work in the Gulf and Southeast Asia.”
I’m familiar with that city having made multiple visits since 1995, and have shared the pains and anxieties of my Nepali friends as they went through political turmoil and a bloody insurgency. I saluted them when their ‘people power’ got rid of the despotic king in 2006.
Vasanthi did remarkably well in presenting her first-time appearance on a BBC-broadcast show. She came across as informed, eager and empathetic to the people and place she was exploring. Not once did I notice a hint of cynicism or condescension in her voice. This is quite in contrast to regular BBC reporters, many of who are far too judgemental and dismissive than good journalists should ever be. We can only hope vasanthi never aspires to those despicable professional levels…
Amidst political intrigue and uncertainties, life goes on in Kathmandu...
In her second show, Vasanthi travels to a small village in Laos next to the old Ho Chi Minh trail where the dominant concern is unexploded cluster bombs from the Vietnam war. The synopsis reads: “From the capital Vientiane it takes 10 hours for reporter Vasanthi Hariprakash to reach her square mile – a village next to the old Ho Chi Minh trail. Today it’s a peaceful highway for enterprising Vietnamese traders but during the war it was a target for the B 52 bombers with their deadly cargo of cluster bombs. 40% are live – called UXOs – Unexploded Ordinance – and Hariprakesh finds the villagers’ poverty leaves them no choice but to run the gauntlet of the unexploded munitions as they work in their paddy fields.”
This reminds me of a short film I saw in Cambodia many years ago about a poor, rural community who faced a similar dilemma living and working in a countryside littered with unknown and unexploded landmines. The Cold War conflicts in Southeast Asia may have ended decades ago, but local people still live in the shadow of their deadly legacies…
I can’t wait for more real-life stories in One Square Mile, and I hope Robert Lamb will send out his intrepid and charming reporters to far corners of the real world where real people are taking on life’s many challenges 24/7. These people’s resilience and resourcefulness inspire us all.
And that’s what good television is all about. Moving images, moving us all!
Location filming Saving the Planet in Nepal
I have written more than once in this blog about Radio Sagarmatha of Nepal, the first independent community broadcasting station in South Asia.
The six-episode series, which was 18 months in the making, features outstanding efforts in education for sustainable development in South and Southeast Asia.
It goes in search of answers to these key questions: Can ordinary people help save our planet under siege from multiple environmental crises? How can everyone change attitudes and lifestyles to consume less and generate less waste?
Here’s the official synopsis of the Nepal story, titled Voice of a Valley:
Tourism generates incomes, jobs and markets for the people of Nagarkot, a popular resort close to the Nepali capital Kathmandu. But it had a bumpy start when hoteliers initially bypassed local communities. These tensions were diffused by Radio Sagarmatha, the country’s first independent public radio station, which brought all interested parties together on the air. This example shows how media can do more than just report. By inspiring discussion and debate, media can help communities to find the best solutions or compromises for their development needs.
Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog) 