Indian-Flag 

        "A flag is a necessity for all nations. Millions have died for it. It is no doubt a kind of idolatry that 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."

        "It will be necessary for us Indians Muslims, Christians Jews, Parsis, and all others to whom India is their home-to recognize a common flag to live and to die for." 

                                                                                                                     - Mahatma Gandhi 

Name of Indian flag:

        Every nation in the world has its own flag. It is the symbol of all the country. Thousands of people die for the flag of their own country. In India, the word "tricolor" is used to refer to the national flag. it is known as Tiranga.  

 

Structure of Indian flag: 

            The National flag of India is horizontal and tricolor. Three colors of the Indian flag are deep saffron (Kesari) at the top, white in the middle, and dark green at the bottom band. All the bands in the flag are in equal proportion with the Ashoka Chakra. 

        Ashoka Chakra is a 24-spoke wheel of navy blue color at the center of the white band. Its design is that of the wheel which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka. Its diameter approximates the width of the white band and it has 24 spokes. 

            In the national flag of India, three-band of three colors are observed. At the top of the flag, the Saffron color band is present which indicating the strength and courage of the country. The white color band is present in the middle which indicates peace and truth with Dharma Chakra. The last band is green in color shows the fertility, growth, and propitiousness of the land. The Ashoka Chakra in the center of the white band is the wheel of the law of dharma. Truth or Satya, dharma, or virtue ought to be the controlling principle of those who work under this flag. Again, the wheel denotes motion. There is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. India should no more resist change, it must move and go forward. The wheel represents the dynamism of a peaceful change.

Design and construction of Indian flag:

           According to the Flag code of India, the Indian flag has a width: height ratio is of 3:2. All the three horizontal bands of the flag (saffron, white and green) are of equal size. The Ashoka Chakra has twenty-four evenly-spaced spokes.

          The size of the Ashoka Chakra is not specified in the flag code, but in section 4.3.1 of "IS1: Manufacturing standards for the Indian Flag". The table is given below shows the size of Ashoka Chakra in mm for different sizes of the flag. Both the Flag code and IS1 state that  the Ashoka Chakra to be printed or painted on both sides of the flag in navy blue 

History of Indian flag:

            Gandhi first proposed a flag to the Indian National Congress in 1921. The flag was designed by Pingali Venkayya. In this flag, at the center was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolizing Gandhi's goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing, between a red stripe for Hindus and a green stripe for Muslims. The design was then modified to replace red with saffron and to include a white stripe in the center for other religious communities, and provide a background for the spinning wheel. However, to avoid sectarian associations with the color scheme, the three bands were later reassigned new meanings: courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry respectively.

         It was adopted and its present start form during a meeting of the Constituent Assembly that was held on 22 July 1947(74 years ago). Then it became the official flag of the Dominion of India on 15 August 1947. The flag was subsequently retained as that of the Republic of India. In India, the term "tricolor" almost always refers to the Indian national flag. The flag is based on the Swaraj flag which is the flag of the Indian National Congress designed by Pingali Venkayya. 

    A few days before India became independent on 15 August 1947, the specially constituted Constituent Assembly decided that the flag of India must be acceptable to all parties and communities. A modified version of the Swaraj flag was chosen and the tricolor remained the same saffron, white and green. However, the charkha was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra representing the eternal wheel of law. The philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who later became India's first Vice President and second President, clarified the adopted flag and described the meaning of all the colors and Ashoka Chakra present in the flag.

Indian flag before the independence: 

        Several flags with varying designs were used during the period of the Indian independence movement by the rulers of different princely states. The idea of a single Indian flag was first raised by the British rulers of India after the rebellion of 1857, which resulted in the establishment of direct imperial rule. 

        It was the first flag of India. The first flag, whose design was based on western heraldic standards, was similar to the flags of other British colonies, including Canada and South Africa. its red field included the Union Jack in the upper-left quadrant and a Star of India capped by the royal crown in the middle of the right half. To address the question of how the star conveyed "Indianness", Queen Victoria created the Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India to honor services to the empire by her Indian subjects. Subsequently, all the Indian princely states received flags with symbols based on the heraldic criteria of Europe including the right to fly defaced British red ensigns.

        In the early twentieth century, around the coronation of Edward VII, a discussion started on the need for a heraldic symbol that was representative of the Indian empire. William Coldstream, a British member of the Indian Civil Service, campaigned the government to change the heraldic symbol from a star, which he considered to be a common choice, to something more appropriate. 

        His proposal was not well received by the government. Lord Curzon rejected it for practical reasons including the multiplication of flags. Around this time, nationalist opinion within the realm was leading to a representation through religious tradition. The symbols that were in vogue included the Ganesha, advocated by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and Kali, advocated by Aurobindo Ghosh and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Another symbol was the cow, or Gau Mata (cow mother). However, all these symbols were Hindu-centric and did not suggest unity with India's Muslim population.

        It is the flag for India from 1904, as seen in an Anglo-Indian weekly. The dark blue band represented Hindus and Buddhists, the green band represented Muslims, and the light blue band represented Christians. The vertical purple band on the left side contained the stars from the Orion constellation, which represented the provinces and states. The surrounding red border symbolized India being kept united and whole by British rule.

          The partition of Bengal (1905) resulted in the introduction of a new flag representing the Indian independence movement that sought to unite the multitude of castes and races within the country. The Vande Mataram flag, part of the nationalist Swadeshi movement, comprised Indian religious symbols represented in western heraldic fashion. The tricolor flag included eight white lotuses on the upper green band representing the eight provinces, a sun and a crescent on the bottom red band, and the Vande Mataram slogan in Hindi on the central yellow band. The flag was launched in Calcutta bereft of any ceremony and the launch was only briefly covered by newspapers. The flag was not covered in contemporary governmental or political reports either but was used at the annual session of the Indian National Congress. 

        A slightly modified version was subsequently used by Madam Bhikaji Cama at the second International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart in 1907. Despite the multiple uses of the flag, it failed to generate enthusiasm amongst Indian nationalists.

            Around the same time, another proposal for the flag was initiated by Sister Nivedita, a Hindu reformist, and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. The flag consisted of a thunderbolt in the center and a hundred and eight oil lamps for the border, with the Vande Mataram caption split around the thunderbolt. It was also presented at the Indian National Congress meeting in 1906. Soon, many other proposals were initiated, but none of them gained attention from the nationalist movement.

        In 1916, Pingali Venkayya submitted thirty new designs, in the form of a booklet funded by members of the High Court of Madras. These many proposals and recommendations did little more than keep the flag movement alive. The same year, Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak adopted a new flag as part of the Home Rule Movement. The flag included the Union Jack in the upper left corner, a star and crescent in the upper right, and seven stars displayed diagonally from the lower right, on a background of five red and four green alternating bands. The flag resulted in the first governmental initiative against any nationalistic flag, as a magistrate in Coimbatore banned its use. The ban was followed by a public debate on the function and importance of a national flag.

        April 1921, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote in his journal Young India about the need for an Indian flag, proposing a flag with the charkha or spinning wheel at the center. The idea of the spinning wheel was put forth by Lala Hansraj, and Gandhi commissioned Pingali Venkayya to design a flag with the spinning wheel on a red and green banner, the red color signifying Hindus and the green standing for Muslims. Gandhi wanted the flag to be presented at the Congress session of 1921, but it was not delivered on time, and another flag was proposed at the session. Gandhi later wrote that the delay was fortuitous since it allowed him to realize that other religions were not represented; he then added white to the banner colors, to represent all the other religions. Finally, owing to the religious-political sensibilities, in 1929, Gandhi moved towards a more secular interpretation of the flag colors, stating that red stood for the sacrifices of the people, white for purity, and green for hope.

        The Swaraj Flag, officially adopted by the Indian National Congress in 1931.

        Governor-General Louis Mountbatten's 1947 proposal for the flag of India, effectively the flag of the Congress but with a Union Jack in the canton. It was rejected by Jawaharlal Nehru because he felt that Congress' nationalist members would see the inclusion of the Union Jack as pandering to the British.

Manufacturing of Indian flag: 

            By law, the flag is to be made of khadi. Khadi is a special type of hand-spun cloth or silk, made popular by Mahatma Gandhi. The manufacturing process and specifications for the flag are laid out by the Bureau of Indian Standards. The right to manufacture the flag is held by the Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission, which allocates it to regional groups. As of 2009, the Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha has been the sole manufacturer of the flag.

            

Protocol for use:

        Usage of the flag is governed by the Flag Code of India and other laws relating to the national emblems. The original code prohibited the use of the flag by private citizens except on national days such as Independence Day and Republic Day. In 2002, on hearing an appeal from a private citizen, Naveen Jindal, the Supreme Court of India directed the Government of India to amend the code to allow flag usage by private citizens. Subsequently, the Union Cabinet of India amended the code to allow limited usage. The code was amended once more in 2005 to allow some additional use including adaptations on certain forms of clothing. The flag code also governs the protocol of flying the flag and its use in conjunction with other national and non-national flags.

Hoisting of Indian flag:

        The rules regarding the correct methods to display the flag state that when two flags are fully spread out horizontally on a wall behind a podium, their hoists should be towards each other with the saffron stripes uppermost. If the flag is displayed on a short flagpole, this should be mounted at an angle to the wall with the flag-draped tastefully from it. If two national flags are displayed on crossed staffs, the hoists must be towards each other and the flags must be fully spread out. The flag should never be used as a cloth to cover tables, lecterns, podiums or buildings, or be draped from railings.

        Whenever the flag is displayed indoors in halls at public meetings or gatherings of any kind, it should always be on the right (observer's left), as this is the position of authority. So when the flag is displayed next to a speaker in the hall or other meeting place, it must be placed on the speaker's right hand. When it is displayed elsewhere in the hall, it should be to the right of the audience. The flag should be displayed completely spread out with the saffron stripe on top. If hung vertically on the wall behind the podium, the saffron stripe should be to the left of the onlookers facing the flag with the hoist cord at the top.

        The flag, when carried in a procession or parade or with another flag or flag, should be on the marching right or alone in the center at the front. The flag may form a distinctive feature of the unveiling of a statue, monument, or plaque, but should never be used as the covering for the object. As a mark of respect to the flag, it should never be dipped to a person or thing, as opposed to regimental colors, organizational or institutional flags, which may be dipped as a mark of honor. During the ceremony of hoisting or lowering the flag, or when the flag is passing in a parade or in a review, all persons present should face the flag and stand at attention. Those present in uniform should render the appropriate salute. When the flag is in a moving column, persons present will stand at attention or salute as the flag passes them. A dignitary may take the salute without a headdress. The flag salutation should be followed by the playing of the national anthem.

        The privilege of flying the national flag on vehicles is restricted to the President, the Vice President or the Prime Minister, Governors and Lieutenant Governors of states, Chief Ministers, Union Ministers, members of the Parliament of India, and state legislatures of the Indian states (Vidhan Sabha and Vidhan Parishad), judges of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts, and flag officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The flag has to be flown from a staff affixed firmly either on the middle front or to the front right side of the car. When a foreign dignitary travels in a car provided by the government, the flag should be flown on the right side of the car while the flag of the foreign country should be flown on the left side.