Gandhi advocated for Indian Flag with Union Jack in corner while Savarkar advocated for Bhagva Flag in 1947

 

Gandhi advocated for Indian Flag with Union Jack in corner while Savarkar advocated for Bhagva Flag in 1947

Dr Vivek Arya 

  On 7 July, 1947 Savarkar sent a telegram to Ambedkar, Rajendra Prasad, Sardar Patel and N.B. Khare, expressing his views on how the flag of free India ought to be. The standard of Hindusthan must be,' he said ‘Bhagwa—Ochre coloured. At any rate, no flag, which does not bear at least a stripe of Bhagwa colour can be recognized by the Hindus as a standard they can respect. The Charkha too must be replaced by a Chakra wheel or any other such symbol signifying progress and strength.'

The Constituent Assembly was in fact deliberating among other things, the new flag of free India at that time. They had indeed reached a consensus to replace the spinning wheel of Gandhi with the Chakra, which was called as that of Emperor Ashoka. Savarkar clarified this too through a public statement on 29 July that the wheel was not a creation of Ashoka. According to him, it was a 'Dharma Chakra' that had been set in motion during Buddha's first sermon in Sarnath that later Ashoka adopted and it symbolized the valour of people like Chandragupta Maurya and Chanakya who drove foreign invaders away. But even after this, he struck an oddly strident and bitter note against the new tricolour:

Having thus noted impartially the good points in the new Flag adopted for the Indian Union, which render it much less objectionable, I must emphatically state it can never be recognized as the National Flag of Hindusthan. Firstly, because the state of Indian Union and the so-called Constituent Assembly are the creation of the British will and not of the free choice of our people ascertained by a national plebiscite and their ultimate sanction even today is the British bayonet and not the national consent or national strength. Secondly, the very mention of the Indian Union reminds us of the break-up of the Unity of India as a nation and a state, the vivisection of our Motherland, and the treacherous Congressite abetment of that crime. How can a genuine nationalist salute such a Flag adopted by such a party with no mandate from the nation as a national flag. No! The authoritative Flag of Hindusthan, our Motherland and Holyland, undivided and indivisible from the Indus to the Seas, can be no other than the Bhagva with the Kundalini and the Kripan inscribed on it to deliver expressly the message of the very Being of our Race! It is not made to order but it is self-evolved with the evolution of our National Being. It mirrors the whole panorama of our Hindu History, is actually

worshipped by millions on millions of llindus and is already flying from the summits of the Himalayas to the Southern Seas, Other Party Flags will be tolerated, some may even be respected in corresponding courtesy but Hindudom at any rate can lovally salute no other Flag but this panHindu Dhwaja, this Bhagva flag as its national standard."

Interestingly, Savarkar had company in his sense of disapproval of the new national tlag in his ideological opponent Gandhi. At a speech in a prayer meeting on 19 July 1947, Gandhi felt it would be good to have the British Union Jack too in a corner of the new Indian flag.

If harm has been done to us by the British, it has not been done by their tlag and we must also take note of the virtues of the British. They are voluntarily withdrawing from India, leaving power in our hands ... we are having Lord Mountbatten as our chief gate-keeper. So long he has been the servant of the British king. Now he is to be our servant. If while we employed him as our servant we also had the Union Jack in a corner of our flag, there would be no betrayal of India in this ... It pains me that the Congress leaders could not show this generosity. We would have thereby shown our friendship for the British. If I had the power that I once had I would have taken the people to task for it. After all, why should we give up our humanity. 

Gandhi was not too happy with the trademark charkha symbol being removed from the flag. Talking to Congress workers in Lahore on 6 August 1947, he said:

I must say that if the flag of the Indian Union will not contain the emblem of the charkha I will refuse to salute that Flag. You know the National Flag of India was first thought of by me and I cannot conceive of India's National Flag without the emblem of the charkha. We have, however, been told by Pandit Nehru and others that the sign of wheel or the chakra in the new National Flag symbolizes the charkha also. Some describe the wheel-mark as Sudarshan Chakra.

But he eventually made peace with it.

[Reproduced from Veer Savarkar by Vikram Sampath]