Century Snapshots — 1906

There is some controversy, however, on whether the honour of hoisting the first Indian flag should rightfully go to Madam Cama and her band of Paris-based nationalists. Some say Madam Cama unfurled her flag in 1905, others maintain that the year this was done is 1907. The flag was very similar in design to the one that had seen the light of day in Calcutta.

But these were early days for the country’s national flag. A third flag hoisted by Dr Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak in 1917, even had a tiny Union Jack in one corner amidst bold stripes and stars, symbolising the idea of dominion status.

It wasn’t until 1921 that the tricolour, as we know it, took shape. The story goes that at a meetingof the All-India Congress Committee as Bezwada in 1921, a flag was brought to Mahatma Gandhi, bearing the colours of red and green to represent the two major communities in India. That was when Gandhiji suggested that a white stripe be added to represent the other communities in the country. He also wanted the charkha or spinning wheel symbol to be included as well.

In the 1931 Karachi Session of the Indian National Congress, the tricolour was officially adopted as the country’s national emblem. It had three colours in it — saffron, white and green — with the spinning wheel at its centre. The colours no longer symbolised communities but national virtues: saffron representing courage and sacrifice, white, truth and peace, and green, faith and chivalry.

The design of the National Flag adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on July 22, 1947, had a major change. The wheel, which appears on the abacus on the Ashokan Sarnath Lions, replaced the spinning wheel at the centre of the flag.

PanditJawaharlal Nehru, when he presented the flag of free India to the Constituent Assembly, declared: “We tried to find out a flag which was beautiful to look at. We thought of a flag which would, in its combination and its separate parts, somehow represents the spirit of the nation, the tradition of the nation, the mixed spirit and tradition which have grown up in these thousands of years in India. So we devised this flag.”