India-Pakistan flags
India and and Pakistani national flagsreuters

It's time for arch-rivals India and Pakistan to show whose flag, or rather nationalism, is higher. On the eve of Pakistan's 71st Independence Day on Monday, August 14, the country's Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa hoisted its largest-ever national flag at Wagah border. The flag, hoisted on a 400-feet pole, goes 50 feet taller than the one Indian authorities had upped on the border at Attari in March this year at 350 feet.

The Pakistani media said the flag hoisted at midnight is the highest now in South Asia and the eighth highest overall.

Bajwa addressed the audience which had gathered for the flag-hoisting ceremony saying: "Some 77 years ago, Pakistan resolution was passed in the same city [Lahore]. Pakistan came into being on the night of 27th Ramazan — it was a blessed night."

He said Pakistan today is "progressing on the right path of the law and Constitution" and its institutions are functioning well and they would make the country of Quaid-e-Azam and Allama Iqbal.

We don't yet know whether New Delhi will come up a 450 feet pole now and the race could soon reach the moon but there is little doubt that the two neighbours have wasted no chance to cross the poles to prove whose nationalism is stronger.

What is surprising that the same Pakistan which had objected to India's installing the massive pole near its border saying it violated international treaties, decided to do the same. Or may be, the collapse of yet another prime minister before completion of the tenure made it a perfect time for the Pakistanis to erect the flag pole to get some nationalist traction.

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