Can we reclaim the spirit of the Tiranga?

The Tricolour can hold its head high this year, despite the misfortune of its unfurling at the Red Fort by a man who does not deserve to hold it. It was a slightly freer air that our national flag breathed this 15 August — the youth of this country have given it back something of its true meaning.

It is not the sight of the Tricolour being hoisted at the Red Fort on 15 August that uplifts an old person like me, who has seen many prime ministers and Presidents, some utterly unworthy, perform this ritual.

What moves me are the images of the young holding the Tricolour with demands for justice on their lips. In those moments, the flag does not signify the pride of the nation. It becomes a symbol of the spirit of freedom, a yearning for liberty, a symbol of resistance against injustice, a symbol of the courage to face the violence of the oppressor with one’s own soul force.

Not that this has happened for the first time in recent years. We saw farmers camping at the doors of Delhi five years ago. They held fort for an entire year, fighting against unjust farm laws. More than 750 of them paid for it with their lives, but they did not budge.

The Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh too held their ground, Tricolour and Constitution in hand, as they opposed the communal reconfiguration of Indian citizenship. They weren’t as fortunate as the farmers and the students. State-sponsored violence and the Covid pandemic put an end to their rousing, memorable protest. They did not achieve their objective, but their fightback was a powerful assertion of the meek before the brute. Through that struggle, the Tricolour was their constant companion.

The Tricolour, our Tiranga, does not derive its majesty from power. Nor does it derive it from the State. It gets its moral force from the hands that refuse to bend before the might of the state. It represents the will of an unarmed people. This is what Jawaharlal Nehru said at a Congress conference in 1931: “Consider the national flag as a symbol of freedom and not merely a piece of tricolour cloth. It is not the flag of a king or emperor; it represents the unity and strength of the teeming millions of India.”

He also said, in the same breath: “I condemn cries of ‘Down with Union Jack’.” It took moral clarity and courage to say this when the people of India were fighting against the British. Nehru had the courage, as did his comrades, to assert that the Tricolour does not demean another flag, that it does not sit well in the hands of those who hate others, who see others as inferior to themselves.

The Tricolour is a symbol of an eternal search for freedom. Those who get frightened when they hear slogans demanding Azadi need to remember these words of Nehru, spoken when the Tricolour was being accepted by the Constituent Assembly.

Nehru reminded the Assembly that even while celebrating the moment, it was important not to forget that the journey of freedom was unending: “It is right and proper that at this moment we should adopt the symbol of this achievement, the symbol of freedom. Now what is this freedom in its entirety and for all humanity? What is freedom and what is the struggle for freedom, and when does it end? As soon as you take one step forward and achieve something, further steps come up before you. There will be no full freedom in this country or in the world as long as a single human being is unfree.

"There will be no complete freedom as long as there is starvation, hunger, lack of clothing, lack of the necessaries of life and lack of opportunity of growth for every single human being, man, woman and child in the country. […] When we increase the happiness of the people, we increase their stature in many ways, and we proceed to our goal. I do not know if there is an end to this or not, but we proceed towards some kind of consummation…”

Even in that triumphant moment, Nehru was modest enough to recognise that freedom cannot be reduced to the achievement of independence from colonial rule. Independence was an event. Freedom was, and remains, a journey.

On the eve of Independence Day this year, I recalled the words of P. Sainath, who criss-crossed the country to record the stories of freedom fighters still alive. One of them told him, very perceptively, that they had fought for freedom and independence. What was achieved was Independence, but the struggle for freedom still goes on.

The Tricolour looks beautiful in the hands of those who, even while asserting their sovereignty, do not wish to dominate others. Supremacist tendencies sleep under the skin of every nation, and one has to be aware of this danger. Nehru was mindful of this temptation: “…there is this danger in a country suddenly unshackled, in stretching out its arms and legs, [that it tries] to hit out at other people.” He was speaking about the imperialist propensity of nationalism.

But that expansionist desire can reside within a nation, within a group of people emboldened by their overwhelming numbers, who start believing they have the right to dictate to other groups how they should live.

Nehru’s warning was not unfounded. In the islands of Lakshadweep, the Tricolour can turn into a symbol of domination when Indian authorities, while hoisting it on Independence Day, also betray an ambition to change the local people’s settled way of life. In Kashmir, the Tricolour is a reminder that its natives cannot exercise their will. When madrasas are ordered to sing Vande Mataram along with the unfurling of the Tricolour, it becomes a symbol of coercion.

External colonialism is easy to identify, but internal colonialism goes under the guise of nationalism. The Adivasis of Bastar, the people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, or Muslims in India experience it as the loss of their autonomy, as the gradual shrinking of the space in which they can determine how they wish to live.

What greater insult can the Tricolour weather than the spectacle of policemen thrashing a Muslim while demanding that he sing the national anthem? Gandhi would have been revolted by the sight. Wasn’t it Gandhi who said that the Gita was dear to him, but if someone put a gun to his head and asked him to recite it, he would refuse?

When we raised the Tricolour this year, did we confess that we, as a nation, have failed to honour the spirit of freedom it represents?

Apoorvanand is an author and academic. Read more of his writing