By S.M. Anwar Hussain,
I don’t understand why there was so much hue and cry in the media if our National Flag ‘The Tiranga’ slipped down from the hands of the National President of BJP Mr Amit Shah and if Mr Prime Minister was seen sipping a glass of water/ tea/ coffee while our beloved Tiranga was being hoisted, or the National Anthem was being chorused. It is an open secret that RSS never accepted Tiranga as our national flag. They don’t respect anything that symbolises modern free India. May be what happened was not mere a slip ; and it was a deliberate and well-thought out signal to the hardcore followers. We must know that they are hell bent to destroy the India that Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and Dr Ambedkar cherished for and the India which our great spiritual heroes like Ram of Ramayana, Krishna of Mahabharata, Mahatma Budh of Kapil Vastu, Chishti of Ajmer and Guru Nanak of Punjab envisaged.
It is also possible that Mr Amit Shah could not hold it due to its unbearable weight. By weight I don’t mean the weight of the bamboo and the fabric of the flag. By weight here I mean the the weight of the colours and the Ashok Chakra. Our National flag, true to its name, Tiranga/ Tricolours consists of three colours: Saffron on the top, White in the middle and Green in the bottom. All three colours are proportionally equal and of the same size and cover the same space on the flag. For RSS and other hindutva people, the saffron colour is symbol of Hindu religion, the green represents Islam and the white stands for Christianity and other non-indigenous religions. So it was the combined weight of the two colours – green and white which was outweighing the ‘ Saffron’ and which made Mr Amit Shah go shaking and trembling and as a result, letting the Indian National flag- a symbol of the honour and pride of our nation that is proudly called INDIA- fall down.
Contrary to what RSS and its clan believe about symbolic meaning of these three colours, Dr Radha Krishnan our first Vice President-a great scholar and philosopher of his time- interpreted the three colours in following words, “Bhagwa or the Saffron denotes renunciation or disinterested ness…….., the White in the middle is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The Green shows our relationship to the plant life here on which all other life depends.”
Ashok Chakra is embossed in the centre of the flag. It represents ‘Raj Dharma’ and Law. There are twenty four spokes in the Chakra and each spoke signifies a virtue or an attribute. All twenty four spokes together stand for ‘Love, Courage, Patience, Peacefulness, Magnanimity, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Selflessness, Self Control, Self Sacrifice, Truthfulness, Righteousness, Justice, Mercy, Gracefulness, Humility, Empathy, Sympathy, Spiritual knowledge , Moral Values, Spiritual Wisdom , The fear of God.’
Can my BJP friends locate any single virtue, represented by the Ashok Chakra, in their national president Mr Amit Shah? They can use any binocular or microscope for this purpose, but to their utmost dismay only. The poor soul was really heaped with such a heavy burden! Those who troubled him for such a solemn occasion were unfair to him to the extent of cruelty, I believe. It was a Ravanian Miracle only that he didn’t suffer a heart attack and did’t collapse.
Truth is that RSS never respected the Tiranga and refused to hoist the national flag on the top of its headquarter building in Nagpur.Its Guru Gowalkar started opposing inclusion of any colour other than Bhagwa in the national flag representing the freedom movement in 1931 itself. It was only in 1948 when Gandhiji was assassinated by an RSS associate, and subsequently RSS was banned, Mr Patel, the then Home Minister, made an explicit condition that RSS would have to accept the ‘Tiranga’ for lifting the ban on RSS, and threatened with dire consequences if somebody tries to supplant the National flag, that RSS agreed to Tiranga and for the first time RSS was forced to hoist the Tiranga on the building of its headquarter in Nagpur on 26th January 1950.The same year Patel died in December. After that nobody saw the Natinal flag flying on buildings belonging to RSS and its fringes until 2002 when NDA was in power; may be under the pressure of gatbandhan politics. Now our countrymen should not suffer from any deception that RSS has finally embraced our beloved ‘TIRANGA’ . No not at all. It has only changed its hue to deceive the nation and to use it as a weapon to harass all the minorities specially Muslims. One Should not forget what RSS goons did in Kasganj of Uttar Pardesh last year how they barged into Muslim locality there with Bhagwa flags in their hands and attacked Muslims for hoisting the Tiranga in their educational institutions and reportedly forced upon Muslims to fly Bhagwa on their houses .This is the love and respect for the Mother India that the RSS keeps close to its chest !
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(S.M. Anwar Hussain, Former President AMU Students’ Union, Aligarh. He can be contacted at smanwarhussain2009@gmail.com )
A courageous and objective description of the fact about the approach of BJP people regarding the Indian flag. I appreciate Mr Anwar for his daring writing, and reminding people the history of RSS followers. This type of objective writing is the need of the hour.
This piece of write-up requires wider readership as we can hardly notice courageous analysis on such matters.