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The Importance of
Flags and banners

My Dear Gauri,

On Independence Day everywhere in India we fly the national flag, don’t we? It is the symbol of our sovereignty, our very existence. The national flag stands for the nation and its honour. To defile the flag is to  defile our honour. Men have fought and even died, for it.

Flags and banners were not unknown to ancient India, but there never had been a common flag for all of India till we attained independence. The Sanskrit word for a flag is dhwaja and flag salutation is dhwaja-vandan. A banner is known as ketu. The Rig Veda makes two references to dhwajas, both in the plural which would suggest that many principalities had their own flags. The Atharva Veda makes a reference to a flag with the device of Surya (Sun god) on it.

Our Gods, too, had their flags each with a special symbol. Siva’s flag had the bull on it, Vishnu’s had Garuda, Indra’s a sword, and Kama’a a fish.

In Puranic times, Arjuna’s flag had Hanuman on it, Aswattama’s lion’s tail, Bhima’s a lion, Bhishma’s a palmyra, Duryodhana’s serpent and so on. Salya’s flag featured a ploughshare and Yudhishtira’s a moon.

Before the British came and took over the country, there were many Indian rulers each of whom had his own flag. When the British became the rulers, they imposed the Union Jack on the country.

When our independence movement began, there naturally was a desire to have a purely Indian national flag. The question arose: What should it be? Many patriots must have given thought to it. The greatest ferment in India around the turn of the century was in Bengal, which had been partitioned by Lord Curzon. That was the beginning of the swadeshi movement. To rally the Bengali people against partition, someone designed a flag. To this day no one knows exactly who designed it, but the first ‘national’ flag in post-1900 India was hoisted by the people of Calcutta at what was then known as the Parsi Bagan Square. It was on 7 August 1905.

This flag was a tricolor: red, yellow and green in that order. The red band at the top had eight white lotuses in a row. The yellow band in the middle had Vande Mataram inscribed on it in the Devanagari script, embedded in blue. The green band at the bottom had a shining sun on the left and a crescent moon and a star on the right. It certainly was a very complicated flag indeed!

Two years later another flag was born, but it was hoisted for the first time not in India but in Stuttagart, Germany, by Madame Bhicaji Rustom Cama, a great Indian patriot. Her flag, which first flew on 22 August 1907, had red, saffron and green bands. At the top on the red band there was a lotus and seven stars – and came to be known as the Saptarshi flag. The saffron band in the middle had the words Vande Mataram in Devanagari script. The green band at the bottom contained the sun on the left and a crescent moon and a star on the right. Madame Cama herself designed the flag which was flown in Stuttgart on the fourth day of the 12th international Socialist Congress and subsequently shown elsewhere as in London in February 1909.

Still later, other flags were designed. There was the so-called Home Rule flag designed by Dr Annie Besant which was not acceptable to many because it also showed the Union Jack – the British imperialist sign – on it.

When Mahatma Gandhi first came on the political scene, he wanted a national flag for all nationalists to rally round. He wrote:

A flag is necessary for all nations. Millions have died for it. It is no doubt a kind of idolatry which it would be a sin to destroy. For a flag represents an ideal. The unfurling of the Union Jack evokes in the English breast sentiments whose strength is difficult to measure. The Stars and Stripes mean a world to the Americans. The star and the crescent will call forth the best bravery in Islam.

It will be necessary for us Indians – Hindus, Mohommadans, Christians, Jews, Parsis and all others to whom India is their home – to recognise a common flag to live and die for.

An early design of a national flag was shown to Gandhihi by a young man called Pingali Venkayya of the National College, Masulipatam. Improvements were subsequently made on it at the behest of Lala Hansraj of Jullundur (now Jalandhar) who suggested that the flag should carry the spinning wheel on it. Gandhiji said: “India as nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel.” The spinning wheel, or the charakha, symbolized industry, production and the economy. The colours chosen for the flag were white, green and red.

The original concept was not then adopted by the Indian National Congress but such a flag came to be hoisted whenever Congressmen gathered at meetings. To preserve the honour of the flag men and women courted imprisonment. In Indian political history, the Nagpur flag satyagraha is a milestone. It was led by Seth Jamnalal Bajaj who was arrested and sentenced to 18 months’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 3000. Over a thousand other Congress volunteers were also arrested. After that, hoisting the national flag became an important part of all Congress meetings.

For all that there was dissatisfaction about the design of the flag and a committee was formed by the Congress to look into the matter. When the All-India congress Committee met in Bombay on 6-8 August 1931 under the presidency of Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel, an agreement was finally arrived at. A resolution unanimously passed declared:

The National Flag shall be three coloured, horizontally arranged, as before, but the colours shall be saffron, white and green  in the order stated here from top to bottom with the spinning wheel in dark blue in centre of the white stripes, it being understood that the colours have no communal significance, but the saffron shall represents courage and sacrifice, white, peace and the truth and green shall represent faith and chivalry and the spinning wheel the hope of the masses. The proportion of the flag should be three to two.

This flag became the official flag of the Indian National Congress: however, India had to wait till 15 August 1947 to have its own national flag at last.

Your loving 

Ajja