India's Flag and Glory

India's Flag achieved it moments of glory on foreign soil and in space at various occasions:

• August 22, 1907: Bhikhaji Rustom Cama was the first Indian to raise India's flag on foreign soil (International Socialist Conference in Stuttgart, Germany) to declare India's Independence from the Britishers. Cama, Veer Savarkar and Shyamji Krishna Varma desgined that flag (a variation on the Calcutta Flag) - green (top), golden saffron and red (bottom). It featured eight lotuses, representing the eight provinces, Vande Mataram (gold) , Crescent (hoist-side), and the Sun (other-side).
  

• May 29 1953: BBC reported the waving of flags when the Mount Everest was conquered first - "Mr Hillary took several photographs of the scenery and of Sherpa Tenzing waving flags representing Britain, Nepal, the United Nations and India."

• 1984 (2 April - October 02): Cosmonaut Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma wore the Indian flag as a medallion on his spacesuit during the Indo-Soviet joint space flight - Soyuz T-11.

The 24 Virtues

One of most elaborate vexillogical symbol is the The Ashok Chakra, which reminds us of 'DharmaChakra' - the wheel of Dharma - an endless cycle of this universe. It proudly adorns the Indian Flag in the center.



The twenty four spokes of this chakra represent twenty four virtues:

1. Love
2. Courage
3. Patience
4. Peacefulness
5. Kindness
6. Goodness
7. Faithfulness
8. Gentleness
9. Self-control
10. Selflessness
11. Self sacrifice
12. Truthfulness
13. Righteousness
14. Justice
15. Mercy
16. Graciousness
17. Humility
18. Empathy
19. Sympathy
20. Godly knowledge
21. Godly wisdom
22. Godly moral
23. Reverential fear of God
24. Hope/trust/faith in the goodness of God.

How many of these virtues do you practice?

Flag - The Oldest Communication Tool?

Take a piece of cloth, make a unique symbol and you have created a community, organization or a nation! What an amazingly simple and powerful tool! Certainly, one of the oldest communication tool in the history of mankind.

Flags are believed to have been invented in India and China and then gradually spread elsewhere. Surprisingly, nations have not been 'creative' enough with the design of their flags. For example, the flags of Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland) are based on the 'cross design' of Denmark.

Flags of the Scandinavian countries - from left: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Taken outside Bella Center, Copenhagen. Author: Hansjorn.

Bangladesh & Pakistan seem to have copied from Japan and Turkey, respectively.

Netherlands's flag is supposed to be the oldest tricolor, leading so many tricolor flags - including India & Ireland- India's flag unveiled in 1921 and Ireland became republic in the same year. India took 43 years to 'develop' the flag that was unfurled on 15th August 1947. It had many disparate versions and numerous 'authors' - starting with Sister Nivedita (1904 - Red & Yellow), an Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda; Subhas Chandra Bose had a variant of the tricolor with a springing tiger; finally, the chapter was closed in 1947 by a committee headed by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India.

More on this in the next posts. But, what have we been discussing?

An independent subject in itself!

Add '-ology' to Latin word vexillum and you get vexillology, defined by the FIAV (Fédération internationale des associations vexillologiques) as:

The creation and development of a body of knowledge about flags of all types, their forms and functions, and of scientific theories and principles based on that knowledge.

The International Congress of Vexillology (ICV) is held every alternate year - 2007 was in Berlin, Germany. 2009 will be in Yokohama, Japan.

Interested?