The Flag of India Tells an Amazing Story

The beautiful Flag of India represents its Nation. There is an Exciting story to its rich history! First, let's talk appearance. It sports three different colored horizontal rectangles, one on top of the other. A very important symbol called the Ashoka Chakra is displayed directly in its center.

The Ashoka Chakra is a wheel with twenty-four spokes in it, represented in blue. The Ashokra Chokra is important because it represents Dharma. Dharma is the eternal law for positive living through cyclic reincarnation. It's the basic concept that the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainsim originated from and follow.

From bottom to top, the tricolors of the flag are green, white and saffron, which is a golden-yellow color. Saffron is also a rare spice used in Indian cooking.

The flag went through several changing design phases by different designers, one of them was Ghandi himself! Each color on the flag has meaning. The saffron, which was originally red. represents the sacrifices of the people, the white stands for the purity of the people, and the green for hope.

This is the official Flag of India, it was adopted in 1947 by the Republic of India.

The National Flag adopted its present form by India's Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947. On this day, it became the official flag for the Dominion of India, and it was later approved to represent the Republic of India as well. How it got to this point is an interesting story.

While India was under British Rule in the Nineteenth Century, several different flags were used to represent India, prior to India's independence movement. There was a rebellion known as the Rebellion of 1857, in which the Indian people united and attempted to overthrow British Rule, but were unsuccessful. So, the British decided that there should be only one singular flag to represent India as a British Nation.

The first National Flag of India was blue and included the Union Flag in the left upper corner, and the Star of India with the British Crown over it, in its lower right section.

This was India's first flag. Obviously, the people of India had very little say in the matter.

In the early Twentieth Century, the idea came about that there was a need to create a flag that better represented the native people of India. There was talk of putting the elephant-headed God Ganesh on the flag, more talk of a sacred cow, and several other symbolistic ideas came about.

In 1905, the Bengal, a land in the far east section of India, was separated from the nation, and with its seperation came a new flag called the Bande Mataram. It displayed eight white lotuses in an upper red band, a sun and a crescent in a lower green band, and a Hindi slogan on the central yellow band.

This flag was raised one time at an annual Indian National Congress, but never became popular enough to last and it faded out quickly. Many flags were proposed, but none stuck until, one day in 1921, when Ghandi suggested one.

Ghandi endorsed the idea of a red, and green flag with a spinning wheel in the center. The red color would represent Hindus and the green would represent Muslims. But just before its official release, a white banner section was also added to represent the other religions of India.

However, the Muslim population almost immediately demanded that they have the color black on the flag to represent their religion. Ghandi saw that this could be a continuing problem and decided to change the meaning of the colors in the flag. The red now stood for the sacrifices of the people, the white for the purity of the people, and the green for hope.

This was India's flag that was endorsed by Ghandi.

A version similar to Ghandi's Flag called the Swaraj Flag was introduced in 1923. There was uproar over the new flag because Indian people did not feel that they were all represented. The flag eventually developed into symbol for India's desire for fight for independence from the British. Ironically, at about that same Congress made this new flag the official Flag of India in 1931.

This was India's Swaraj Flag from 1923 to 1947, It helped lead to India's fight for independence from Britain.

India did in fact, eventually, gain independence from the British in 1947. Just a few days before India officially gained its freedom, a Constituent Assembly was formed. The assembly decided it was a good idea to try and represent all of people of India with the flag, and also to make its appearance more symmetrical.

This is why India's flag now displays the Dharmic Chokra and remains the Flag of India today.

Return from Flag of India page to the Home page.

New! Comments