India & Ireland

A couple of weeks ago it was, as every year, 15 August, Indian Independence Day. Which for reasons of callous Imperial convenience, was exactly 2 years after VJ Day 1945. For callous Imperial realpolitik short-termism, the Raj had been dismembered and "Pakistan" celebrated its independence the day before on 14 Aug 1947. Pakistan didn't last even 2 dozen years before it, in turn, had to hive off Bangladesh as an independent polity. Both these partitions resulted in uncountable ethnic cleansing deaths  There is, has to be, more to defining a nation than we're [almost] all Muslims or Protestants

Over the last ~6 years, I've acquired far too much information about, and a deal of affection for, a student from my days at The Institute. It started when I was assigned to mentor him during the writing of a thesis for his Masters in Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs. Correcting his English and polishing his crap-detector developed into buying him morale-boosting cake and listening to him [Bob the Scientist for The Win!] as he ran through career and domicile options. Around about this time of year, I will send him a how's she cuttin'? sort of e-mail because I know that, despite living in The Independent Republic of Cork Ireland he identifies as a) a citizen of Tamil Nadu b) Indian. I know this because of his description of reacting to the turkey-cock strutting at the Wagah Crossing, when he visited there.

I was hand-clapping delighted when this year's enquiry triggered an invite to his first-born son's 1st Birthday Party. The little chap is not entitled to Irish citizenship because of the Racist Referendum of 2004, but you can bet your sweet bippy that he will grow up speaking perfect idiomatic Corkese and play GAA with the best of them.

As I was in flag-wagging mode I checked out the difference between the green&white&orange tricolours of our two republics. Apart from horizontal vs vertical, the Indian flag sports a saffron stripe, not an orange one. And the Irish green #9A is greener than the Indian green #6A.

India  Green White Saffron  #046A38 #FFFFFF #FF671F
Irela  Green White Orange  #009A44 #FFFFFF #FF8200 

And talking of Wagah and face-off at the borrrder consider our own sublimated hostility to people on the other side of a political frontier in Ireland that is completely ignored by wren and badgers. By their hats shall ye know them?