Indian flag colours represent Hindus, Muslims and others! Guha sparks controversy on RSS and Tri-colour

Constitution Assembly adopted Nehru's resolution, but was slightly ambivalent on the  meaning  of the colours in  the  Indian national flag

February 23, 2016, NewsCrunch

Historian Ramachandra Guha has sparked off a controversy by tweeting that the colours of the Indian flag rejects the Hindu supremacy advocated by RSS.

The father of the nation, Gandhi, wanted the colours to represent different communities - Saffron for Hindus, Green for Muslims and White for other communities.

It was because of this colour code, RSS took time to acknowledge the Indian flag, Guha suggests.

The story is a little more complicated than this.

In early 1920s, Gandhi got  a flag designed by Pingali Venkayya, with a charka in the middle. The three colours of the flag were red to represent Hindus and Sikhs, Green to represent Muslims and White  to represent others. White was on top, followed by Green and Red.

While Gandhi thought equal communal representation would make the flag a unifying factor, many including Nehru were not comfortable with the communal baggage the flag came with.

Sikhs were also not happy getting clubbed with Hindus and wanted a separate colour of their own.

Over the next decade, the flag underwent a few changes. Red gave way to ochre and finally to saffron.

In 1931, the Congress Committee chose the version of the flag with saffron on top, white in the middle and green at the bottom, with a charkha in between, as the official flag of the party.

The colours of the Indian flag became an interesting topic of debate in the Constitution Assembly.

On the 22nd of July, 1947, Nehru  moved a resolution to adopt the flag with a change - replacing the charka with the Ashoka Chakra.

He was emphatic in rejecting that the colours represented any particular community and blamed that notion on a misunderstanding.

As Nehru said in his Constitution Assembly speech:

Some people, having misunderstood its significance, have thought of it in communal terms and believe that some part of it represents this community or that. But I may say that when this Flag was devised there was no communal significance attached to it.
Though Nehru's resolution was successfully adopted many members such as Mohomed Sheriff, H. J. Khandekar and Saiyid Mohammad Saadulla made references to the religious significance the colours.
There were also members such as Frank R. Anthony, who agreed with Nehru in distancing the Tri-colour from communities.

The best speech of the day came from S Radhakrishnan, who sought to explain what the colours stood for.

The white colour showed the path of truth; the Orange the spirit of renunciation and the Green the progress.
Ashoka's wheel represented the wheel of Dharma, which perpetually moves overcoming our resistance to change.

While Radhakrishnan did not tie colours to communities, he did take note of the religious underpinnings of he White and Saffron colours in his speech.

His speech was very well received and the meanings imparted by him to the three colours became the official stand of the Indian republic.

But the ambivalence continues.