Har Ghar Tiranga, PM Modi’s campaign, has begun: On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, millions of homes will raise the tricolour in honour of the many men and women who gave their lives as martyrs to ensure that we can enjoy our freedom today. Recalling our own past and what was essential in securing our independence would help Har Ghar Tiranga transcend slogan and ritual.
The Indian Constitution and the Tiranga go hand in hand. In order to choose the country’s flag, a 12-person ad hoc committee was formed in June 1947 by the Constituent Assembly (CA). The group, known as the “Flag Committee,” included Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Sarojini Naidu, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi, KM. Pannikar, Frank Anthony, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Hiralal Shastry, Baldev Singh, Satyanarayan Sinha, and SN. Gupta. Its president was Rajendra It was expected that the committee’s members would advocate for the tricolour to be adopted as the country’s flag, but with the significant change of the Ashoka Chakra in place of the charkha.
The tricolour was officially accepted by the Congress party in a resolution from 1931, but in actuality, it was used by Indians as their primary flag in their fight for independence. Members of the CA frequently used the flag as a representation of sacrifice for a free India; HK Khandekar stated “How many people gave their lives in exchange for having their children slaughtered or destroyed? The British Empire exerted all of its might to destroy this Flag, but we Americans have always loved and guarded it.”
Of course, other flags signified important streams in the fight for independence. For instance, in their valiant battles against the British Raj and its local allies, the Communists, workers, and peasants raised the crimson flag, which they saw as a sign of struggle and sacrifice. The red flag was originally flown in India in 1923 at a workers’ demonstration in Madras, and it later spread over the entire nation. The Adivasis had their own flags in all of their uprisings and rebellions against the British. Jaipal Singh Munda, one of the most inspiring Adivasi voices in the CA said “Each (adivasi) village has its own flag and that flag cannot be copied by any other tribe. I can guarantee that if someone ventured to question that flag, that specific tribe would defend it with its very last drop of blood. In the future, there will be two flags: this national flag, which represents our independence, and the other, which has existed here for the last 6,000 years. The tricolour was approved as the national flag despite the fact that many other flags used in the national movement are still in use today. The red flag, for instance, is a proud emblem of the ongoing fight against injustice.
The fact that the flag’s colours didn’t stand for any specific religious group because it was a secular flag was another topic of controversy. “Some people, having misconstrued its importance, have thought of it in communal terms and assume that some section of it represents this community or that,” Jawaharlal Nehru said in introducing the resolution for the national flag. However, I should note that this Flag had no societal meaning when it was created. Shiban Lal Saxena, a different group member, stated, “We expressed it in clear words that the three colours had no communal significance…those who have been driven insane by communalism nowadays should not regard our flag to be a communal banner. The meaning of the colours in the flag were variously interpreted in the discussion that followed, ranging from renunciation and sacrifice symbolised by the saffron to closeness to nature symbolised by the green colour to peace and nonviolence by the white – but all participants agreed that the flag was not communal. This flag instructs us to “Be ever vigilant, be ever on the move, go forward, work for a free, flexible compassionate, decent, democratic society in which Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists will all find a safe haven,” according to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s interpretation.
Social justice and freedom from oppression and hunger made up the third topic of discussion. There won’t be total freedom as long as there is starvation, hunger, a lack of clothing, a lack of necessities of life, and a lack of opportunities for growth for every single man, woman, and child in the nation, Nehru said when referring to the flag as a symbol of freedom. This sentiment was echoed in speeches by numerous other speakers. It is disheartening to think that millions of households will be excluded from Har Ghar Tiranga because they are landless, homeless, or have low incomes 75 years later.
Huge inequities that contradict the sentiments stated in the Constituent Assembly and necessitate a second independence fight are a result of the aggressive capitalism economic framework. When the tricolour was accepted by the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947, these aspects—sacrifice for the nation’s freedom, unity to accomplish it, and social and economic justice—were the topics of discussion that were frequently brought up.
However, there was one political party, the RSS, that refused to support the tricolour. Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece, declared in 1947, “The Tricolor may be placed in our hands by those who gained power through a stroke of luck, but Hindus would never revere it or claim ownership of it. Three is a poor number in and of itself, thus a flag with three colours is harmful for a nation and will undoubtedly have a negative psychological impact.” The RSS intended the saffron flag, which served as its organisational banner until recently, to serve as India’s national flag, just as it desired that the Manusmriti serve as the foundation for India’s Constitution.
The RSS was outlawed two days after Mahatma Gandhi was killed by Nathuram Godse, the country’s first terrorist after independence. The recognition of the national flag was one of many requirements placed on the RSS a year later before the ban was lifted. “An express embrace of the National Flag would be important for satisfying the public that there are no misgivings in regard to allegiance to the State,” stated Home Secretary HVR Iyengar in a May 1949 letter to RSS Chief MS Golwalkar. It was necessary for the RSS to accept this.
The RSS warns folks today not to “politicise the subject” by reminding the country of its past. However, it is hesitant to admit that it was completely mistaken. On the other hand, Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat, a senior of the RSS, recently asserted that the Bhagwa Dhwaj could replace the national flag if the Hindu samaj banded together.
The flag stands for some core national principles of India that the RSS despises. The principles of the independence movement were based on a patriotism that transcended religious affiliation and was connected to secular citizenship. In the face of a full-scale assault by those in authority and others whose goal in the liberation movement was to support the British policy of divide-and-rule, Har Ghar Tiranga must be a commitment to protect and uphold those beliefs. The Constitution’s preamble and the historic phrase “we the people of India” (not “we the followers of this faith or that religion”), “hum Bharat ke log,” are shown alongside the raising of the flag.
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