Tuesday, December 8, 2009

dOSE - INDIAN NATIONAL FLAG

  1. The Calcutta Flag was one of the first unofficial flags of India. It was designed by Schindra Prasad Bose and unfurled on August 7, 1906 at Parsi Bagan Square (Greer Park), Calcutta. The flag had three horizontal bands of equal width with the top being orange, the centre yellow and the bottom green in colour. It had eight half-opened lotus flowers on the top stripe and a picture of the sun and a crescent moon on the bottom stripe. वन्दे मातरम् Vande Mataram was inscribed in the centre in Sanskrit.
  2. The National Flag of India was adopted in its present form during an ad hoc meeting of the Constituent Assembly held on the 22 July 1947, twenty-four days before India's independence from the British on 15 August 1947.
  3. The national flag, adopted in 1947, is based on the flag of the Indian National Congress, designed by Pingali Venkayya.
  4.  The flag is a horizontal tricolour of "deep saffron" at the top, white in the middle, and green at the bottom. In the centre, there is a navy blue wheel with twenty-four spokes, known as the Ashoka Chakra, taken from the Lion Capital of Asoka erected atop Ashoka pillar at Sarnath. The diameter of this Chakra is three-fourths of the height of the white strip. The ratio of the width of the flag to its length is 2:3. The flag is also the Indian Army's war flag, hoisted daily on military installations.
  5. The official flag specifications require that the flag be made only of khadi.
  6. Indian law says that the flag must at all times be treated with "dignity, loyalty and respect". The "Flag Code of India – 2002", which superseded "The Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950", governs the display and usage of the flag.
  7. There are a number of traditional rules of respect that should be observed when handling or displaying the flag. When out in the open, the flag should always be hoisted at sunrise and lowered at sunset, irrespective of the weather conditions. The flag may be also flown on a public building at night under special circumstances.
  8. The flag should never be depicted, displayed or flown upside down. Tradition also states that when draped vertically, the flag should not merely be rotated through 90 degrees, but also reversed. One "reads" a flag like the pages of a book, from top to bottom and from left to right, and after rotation the results should be the same. 
  9. With other countries-----When the flag is displayed on crossed poles, the Indian flag's pole should be in front and the flag to the right (observers' left) of the other flag. When the United Nations flag is flown along with the Indian flag, it can be displayed on either side of it. The general practice is to fly the flag on the extreme right with reference to the direction which it is facing.
  10. When the flag is displayed with other flags that are not national flags, such as corporate flags and advertising banners, the rules state that if the flags are on separate staffs, the flag of India should be in the middle, or the furthest left from the viewpoint of the onlookers, or at least one flag's breadth higher than the other flags in the group. Its flagpole must be in front of the other poles in the group, but if they are on the same staff, it must be the uppermost flag. If the flag is carried in procession with other flags, it must be at the head of the marching procession, or if carried with a row of flags in line abreast, it must be carried to the marching right of the procession