Har Ghar Tiranga
As India approaches its 80th Independence Day on 15 August, the Har Ghar Tiranga campaign, encouraging citizens to hoist the national flag at their own homes, is once again gathering pace across the country. This article looks at this now-familiar August ritual through sociologist Robert Bellah's concept of "civil religion," the idea that even avowedly secular nations develop shared sacred symbols and rituals functioning much like religious observance, binding citizens together through collective reverence for the nation itself. Historicity: A Secular Nation's Sacred Symbols Robert Bellah, writing about the United States in a 1967 essay, observed that American public life was saturated with symbols, rituals, and language, the flag, the pledge of allegiance, presidential inaugural addresses invoking divine providence, that functioned religiously, evoking reverence, moral obligation, and collective identity, even within a constitutionally secular state that maintained f...