Indian Culture

The Indian flag is the pride of every Indian. We have a very colourful flag which truly represents our diversity. It will be hard, if not impossible, to find an Indian who does not feel any emotions when looking at the Indian flag.

Our flag has three main colours:

Saffron or bhagwa colour is the top colour. It represents spirituality as saffron is the colour worn mainly by religious people in India. In the middle, it is white. White represents purity and truth. Green, the bottom colour, represents courage.

In the middle of the white colour, there is a navy blue circle with twenty four spokes. It is called Ashok Chakra as it was taken from the Ashoka’s pillar in Sarnath. Ashok Chakra represents the law and/or the religion. I will talk about the King Ashoka in detail some other day.

Very few people know that the Saffron and Green colour originally represented Hindus and Muslims respectively. Also, there was a Charkha, instead of Ashok Chakra, before 1947. Charkha is an equipment which is used to make a type of cloth, khadi. Today, khadi is the only material used to make the Indian flags.

Dignity of the Indian flag is guarded with a strict protocol. Before 2002, only the government institutions were allowed to fly the flag. Now, general public can also feel the honour in flying the Indian flag, provided the flag’s dignity is always maintained i.e. it must not touch the ground or water, etc.

Few Indian celebrities have gone under the microscope of media for not respecting the flag properly. In most of the cases, media was blamed for blowing it out of the proportion.