Saffron Flag as the Unifying Flag

Shamsul Islam

DY Chandrachud when took charge as Chief Justice of Indian Supreme Court (SC) in November 2022 (to relinquish office in November 2024) many of the pseudo-liberals who claimed to defend the democratic-secular polity of India manifested great happiness. They thought that the time of SC being an appendage of the RSS-BJP government headed by PM Modi was over as Justice Chandrachud was a liberal judge committed to democratic-secular polity of India. They over-looked the fact that he was believed to have been the Justice who authored the notorious Ayodhya judgment given on November 9, 2019. It was not a judgment based on legal and constitutional proprieties but a political decision full of trickeries to placate the majoritarian agenda catered aggressively by Modi and RSS.

If one needed another proof of his love for Hindutva one must take note of his love for saffron flag as flag of justice. Justice Chandrachud after performing pooja at Hindu temples of Dwarikadhish and Somnath with his family in Gujarat on January 6 (2024) had no qualms in stating “I was inspired this morning by the dhwaja [flag] at Dwarikadhishji, very similar to the dhwaja, which I saw at JagannathPuri. But look at this universality of the tradition in our nation, which binds all of us together. This dhwaja has a special meaning for us. And that meaning which the dhwaja gives us is–there is some unifying force above all of us, as lawyers, as judges, as citizens. And that unifying force is our humanity, which is governed by the rule of law and by the Constitution of India”. [‘After temple visits, CJI D Y Chandrachud flags ‘dhwaja of justice’ to district court lawyers’ The Indian Express, January 7, 2024]

It is to be noted that all the above referred temples fly saffron/yellow flags and CJI Chandrachud implied that Tricolour; the Indian National Flag was not the “unifying force” but the flags flying at the temples. The above statement of CJI was, in fact, rephrasing of the statement of the most prominent ideologue of RSS, M S Golwalkar who while addressing a Gurupurnima gathering in Nagpur on July 14, 1946, stated: “It was the saffron flag which in totality represented Bhartiya [Indian] culture. It was the embodiment of God. We firmly believe that in the end the whole nation will bow before this saffron flag.” [Golwalkar, M.S., Shri GurujiSamagarDarshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi), BhartiyaVicharSadhna, Nagpur, nd., volume 1, p. 98.]

The same Golwalkar while denouncing the choice of Tricolour as National Flag in an essay entitled ‘Drifting and Drifting’ in the book Bunch of Thoughts (collection of writings of Golwalkar, a RSS publication and Gita for RSS cadres) wrote: “Our leaders have set up a new flag for our country. Why did they do so? It is just a case of drifting and imitating….Ours is an ancient and great nation with a glorious past. Then, had we no flag of our own? Had we no national emblem at all these thousands of years? Undoubtedly we had. Then why this utter void, this utter vacuum in our minds?” [Golwalkar, M.S., Bunch of Thoughts, SahityaSindhu, Bangalore, 1996, pp. 237-238.]

This hatred for the Tricolour led RSS to declare the Tricolour as ‘evil’ on the eve of Independence. The RSS English mouthpiece ORGANISER demeaning the choice of the National Flag (14 August 1947) wrote: "The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country."

RSS borrowed this hatred for the Tricolour from V D Savarkar who declared that “The Charkha-Flag [then Tricolour used to have charkha or spinning wheel in the middle which was later replaced by Ashok Chakra] in particular may very well represent a Khadi-Bhandar, but the Charkha can never symbolise and represent the spirit of the proud and ancient nation like the Hindus.” [Bhide, A. S. (ed.), VinayakDamodarSavarkar’s Whirlwind Propaganda: Extractsfrom the President’s Diary of his Propagandist Tours Interviews from December 1937 to October 1941, na, Bombay, 1940, pp. 469–473]

It is horrendous that CJI of Indian Supreme Court who is duty-bound to safeguard the democratic-secular polity of India with Tricolour as a unique symbol of it is renegading on his OATH which he took while assuming the office as the 50th CJI on November 9, 2022!

08-01-2024
[Link for some of S. Islam's writings in English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and video interviews/debates:http://du-in.aca demia.edu/ShamsulIslam, Facebook: https://facebook.com/shamsul.islam.332 Twitter: @shamsforjustice http://shamsforpeace. blogspot.com (m) notoinjustice@gmail.com]

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Vol 56, No. 31, Jan 28 - Feb 3, 2024