INDEPENDENCE DAY....Most important day in the life of a nation...so it is for us today. Nation is almost all the time symbolised by her flag...Indian tricolour...consisting of orange symbolising courage, white symbolising peace and truth, and green symbolising prosperity... The need to have our own flag was first felt in 1857 and thought started rolling. Later 1st flag was designed by sister Nivedita, then in 1904 Madam Kama , Veer Savarkar and Shyamji Krishna Varma designed a flag which was hoisted by Madam Kama in Germany during 1st world war. this was also known as Berlin committee flag. in the year 1916 Lokmanya Tilak along with Annie Besant designed another flag. Mr Pingali Venkaiya of Andhra designed a flag after researching flags of 30 nations for 5 years came up with a flag with 2 colours orange and green and a charkha. but Gandhiji asked him to add white so this became the tricolour..this was the congress flag... in 1931 a 7 member committee was formed to look into this matter. Then in 1947 another ad hock committee was formed to come up with the task of designing the national flag. stalwarts like Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr Ambedkar, Sarojini Naidu, K M Munshi, Rajagopalachari and Maulana Azad formed this committee.This committee replaced the charkha with the Ashok Chakra or Dharma Chakra which symbolizes wheel of law. it also intends to show there is life in movement....and so we got our national flag some 21 days before 15th Aug 1947... first prime minister of independent India Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tricolour from red fort on august 16th 1947....it was the dream of Netaji Subhashchandra Bose to see this happen... so despite the gloom..poverty..lack of accountability..corruption..illiteracy....................JAI HIND..............
nice info and imp for the present generation ! in my son's(archit) school indep day attendance was not comulsory and guess how many kids turned up...a pathetic seven!! sometimes i feel its the parents and teachers who need a kick. so much for freedom (azaadi) earned without shedding a drop of blood (ahimsa)
ReplyDeleteIn defense of the children who chose not to show up, may I say this: In the post colonial world, "independence" had come to mean being subjugated and exploited by people of one's own kind rather than a forengi. Children do study history and it is all laid out for them to make their own conclusions. The benefits of a non-school day loitering with friends or chomping on snacks in front of a television would indeed seem a better option than salute something that stands for all the things (gloom, poverty, etc..) that Suchitra mentioned and dot-dotted at the end of her post.
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