It is believed that during the inception of the Khilafat Movement in India in favour of Turkey in 1920, a Pingali Venkayya of the National College, Masulipatam (present-day Andhra Pradesh) presented a booklet to the Congress. This booklet included descriptions of the flags of other nations as well as designs for the national flag of India. Concurrently, the Khilafat Committee also designed its own flag for the Khilafat Movement. It was from this that Mahatma Gandhi conceived the idea of a distinctive flag for India to inspire the nation’s spirit.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote in Young India on April 13, 1921, “A flag is a necessity for all nations. Millions have died for it. It is no doubt a kind of idolatry that 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 it is difficult to measure. The Stars and Stripes mean the world to the Americans. The Star and the Crescent will call forth the best bravery in Islam…”
Gandhi further wrote in the same article, “I have always admired the persistent zeal with which Mr. Venkayya has prosecuted the cause of a national flag at every session of the Congress for the past four years, he was never able to enthuse me; and in his designs, I saw nothing to stir the nation to its depths…”
It should be noted that Lala Hansraj of Jalandhar suggested to Gandhi that the spinning wheel should have a place in our Swarajya flag. Gandhi wrote on it, “I could not help admiring the originality of the suggestion. At Bezwada, I asked Mr. Venkayya to give me a design containing a spinning wheel on a red (Hindu colour) and green (Muslim colour) background…”
Gandhi expressed, “His enthusiastic spirit enabled me to possess a flag in three hours. It was just a little late for presentation to the All-India Congress Committee. I am glad it was so. On maturer consideration, I saw that the background should represent the other religions also. Hindu-Muslim unity is not an exclusive term; it is an inclusive term, symbolic of the unity of all faiths domiciled in India. If Hindus and Muslims can tolerate each other, they are together bound to tolerate all other faiths.
The unity is not a menace to the other faiths represented in India or to the world. So I suggest that the background should be white and green and red. The white portion is intended to represent all other faiths. The weakest numerically occupy the first place, the Islamic colour comes next, the Hindu colour red comes last, the idea being that the strongest should act as a shield to the weakest. The white colour moreover represents purity and peace. Our national flag must mean that or nothing. And to represent the equality of the least of us with the best, an equal part is assigned to all the three colours in the design.” But, according to an article published in The Times of India on January 26, 1950, the red colour of the flag was changed to saffron by the Indian National Congress in 1931.
Gandhi was not happy with the removal of the Charkha from the flag
When the new design of the national flag was adopted on July 22, 1947, Gandhi appeared deeply disheartened. He was displeased with the removal of the spinning wheel from the flag. In one of his prayer meetings on the same day, Gandhi remarked, “Four sisters came to congratulate me today because the tricolour with the wheel has been adopted as the national flag of India. I see no cause for congratulations. I am told that instead of the charkha, there is now only a wheel on the flag. But whether they keep the charkha or not makes no difference to me. Even if it is discarded, I will still hold it in my hand and in my heart.”
On July 27, 1947, in New Delhi, Gandhi said, “Some say that the original flag has gone, that a new age has begun and with it have come new ways,
Mahatma Gandhi with Jawaharlal Nehru during a public meeting in Bombay India 1940s
and that the flag will be one to befit this new age. I have not known a worthy son to whom his mother appeared ugly. It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful? Hence, in my opinion, nothing would have been lost if no changes had been made in the original flag…”
These words of Gandhi were published in an article in Gujarati’s Harijan Bandhu.
In the Gujarati newspaper Harijan Bandhu published on August 3, 1947, Gandhi wrote, “Looking at the wheel some may recall Prince of Peace, King Asoka, ruler of an empire, who renounced power. He represented all faiths; he was an embodiment of compassion. Seeing the charkha in his chakra adds to the glory of the Charkha. Asoka’s chakra represents the eternally revolving Divine Law of ahimsa.”
On August 6, 1947, while talking to the Congress workers in Lahore, Gandhi wrote, “You know the National Flag of India was first thought of by me and I cannot conceive of India’s National Flag without the emblem of the charkha. We have, however, been told by Pandit Nehru and others that the sign of wheel or the chakra in the new National Flag symbolises the charkha also. Some describe the wheel-mark as Sudarshan Chakra, but I know what Sudarshan Chakra means.”
Interestingly, on August 3, a gentleman from Hyderabad wrote a letter to Gandhi. This letter was published in the August 17, 1947 issue of Harijan Sevak. In this letter, it was mentioned that K.M. Munshi described the chakra in the flag as Sudarshan Chakra. On this, Gandhi had said, “Under no circumstances can the Asoka Chakra become a symbol of violence. Emperor Asoka was a Buddhist and a votary of non-violence. The Sudarshan Chakra can have no connection with the wheel in the flag.”
Who designed the Indian national flag?
There has always been a debate about the history of the Indian national flag. Who designed the tricolour? Some people take the name of P. Venkayya, while others say that Surayya Tyabji developed the current design of the Indian national flag. But to find the answer to this question of what history says about this, I flipped the pages of history in the National Archives of India and found the matter quite complicated.
But now when I saw The Times of India of January 26, 1950, the answer to this question is completely clear. The national flag that was hoisted at this time was designed by a woman. The Times of India writes, “The Flag was presented to the nation by the women of India at the memorable midnight session of the Constituent Assembly on August 14, 1947.” And that woman was none other than Surayya Tyabji.
Sheila Dikshit the former chief minister of Delhi, writes in her book Citizen Delhi: My Times My Life, “Occasionally, the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, former ICS officer Badruddin Tyabji and his gracious wife, Surayya Tyabji (their daughter Leila Tyabji of Dastkar fame became a good friend years later), would call us over. At that time, I did not know what I came to know later – that the Indian national flag made of hand-spun, hand-woven khadi, which was hoisted on the evening of August 15, 1947, had been designed by none other than the Tyabjis (Surayya Tyabji was 28 years old at the time).”
She further writes, “Everyone had assumed that the Congress tricolour designed by Pingali Venkayya, with Gandhiji’s charkha in the middle, would be the national flag. Since there was opposition to a party flag becoming the national flag, the Tyabjis were tasked with re-doing the design. The couple decided to replace the charkha (hand-operated spinning wheel) with the Ashoka chakra…That was not all. Before re-doing the flag, the couple had designed the national emblem of independent India. A few months prior to independence came the realisation that India would need a new emblem. So, Nehru turned to Badruddin Tyabji, who was part of the Constituent Assembly, to ‘do something about it’, because he had ‘an eye for that sort of thing’.”
She also writes about discovering the fact that the national emblem was also designed by Mrs. Tyabji. She states in her book, “Tyabji’s requests to art schools for designs came up short, being heavily influenced by the British emblem. It was then that the Tyabjis had this brainwave of the lions and the chakra on top of the Ashoka column. Twenty-eight-year-old Surayya drew a graphic version of it and the printing press at the Viceregal Lodge made some impressions of it. That is how the three lions became the national emblem (the text below was a later addition). Laila says her parents never felt that they had ‘designed’ the emblem; it was more like ‘just reminding India of something that had always been part of our identity’. And like most things in their marriage, these two precious tasks were accomplished as a joint effort.”
“Even though Vinod and I were not aware of these details when we visited the Tyabjis, in their hospitality and the erudition they brought to the conversation, we instinctively sensed a deep love for and commitment to a new India, representing a pan-Indian syncretic culture,” she adds.
Who was Surayya Tyabji?
Surayya Tyabji (1919–1978) was the granddaughter of the late Sir Akbar Hydari, who served as the prime minister of Hyderabad State. Her father was Aamir Ali and her mother was Leila Hasan Latif. She was married to Badruddin Tyabji. A passionate painter, one of her works was displayed at the Indo-Pakistani exhibition at Burlington House, London, in 1947. Another of her paintings was showcased at an exhibition in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1954. Tyabji also had an extensive collection of both old and modern Indian paintings.
Her husband, Badruddin Tyabji, joined the Indian Civil Service in 1932 and served in Punjab as assistant commissioner and undersecretary to the home and political departments. Badruddin Tyabji’s grandfather, Justice Badruddin Tyabji, was a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress, while his uncle, Abbas Tyabji, was a close confidant of Mahatma Gandhi. His father, Justice Faiz Tyabji, served in the judiciary of Madras and Bombay and was well-versed in Islamic law.
Badruddin Tyabji was one of Nehru’s close friends. We can see many letters written by Nehru to Tyabji in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru and Nehru never forget to write “good wishes to Surayya.” Tyabji played a prominent role in the talks the prime minister Nehru had with his counterpart in Pakistan in 1953.
What does Surayya Tyabji’s daughter say?
Surayya Tyabji’s 77-year-old daughter Padma Shri Laila Tyabji wrote an article, How the Tricolour and Lion Emblem Really Came to Be for The Wire in 2018, in which she said that her father Badruddin Tyabji had set up a flag committee headed by Rajendra Prasad on the instructions of Nehru. Badruddin Tyabji was then working as an Indian Civil Service officer in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Laila Tyabji says that it was her parents who not only gave Nehru the idea of Ashok Chakra, but her mother also drew a pictorial draft of the flag. According to Laila Tyabji in this article, “My father watched that first flag – sewn under my mother’s supervision by Edde Tailors & Drapers in Connaught Place – go up over Raisina Hill.”
Her statement sets to rest all controversies about who designed our national flag. We should strive to maintain the dignity and honour of the flag at all times. But asking people to hoist the flag on the rooftops of their houses is a sudden outpouring of pseudo-nationalism by those people who had nothing to do with the national flag for many decades after independence.
Gandhi forbade the hoisting of the tricolour on temples
Interestingly, at the time of independence, Hindutva adherents who opposed the national flag used the spinning wheeled national flag to create Hindu-Muslim riots in the country after independence. It was exactly like how today the environment of the country is being spoilt in the name of the Tricolour.
Gandhi was strongly against the national flag being used in temples or for religious purposes. Gandhi wrote many essays and letters during his life in which Hindutva hyper-nationalists were criticised for misusing the national flag.
He wrote in a letter dated September 29, 1941, to the minister of the Hindu Mahasabha of Shimoga, Mysore State. “I have known [that] the national flag [has been] used in Ganapati processions. It is wrong to use the national flag on temples. The Congress is a national organisation in that it is open to all without distinction of race or creed. The Congress has as much or as little to do with Hindu festivals as with any other.”
Gandhi had earlier clearly written in his article in Harijan on November 5, 1938, “As the author of the idea of a national flag and its makeup which in essence the present flag represents, I have felt grieved how the flag has been often abused and how it has even been used to cover violence. The flag has been designed to represent non-violence expressed through real communal unity and non-violent labour which the lowliest and highest can easily undertake with the certain prospect of making substantial and yet imperceptible addition to the wealth of the country.”
Afroz Alam Sahil is a freelance journalist and author. He can be contacted at @afrozsahil on X.