THIS ABOVE ALL
The story of our Tricolour
KHUSHWANT SINGH

People all over the world have created symbols which emphasise their separate identities. Amongst the commonest are their flags. Indian rulers were no exception. In the Mahabharat there are references to dhawajas (flags). Muslims monarchs had alams. Many communities had separate flags of their own, as some have to this day. Hindu and Sikh flags are triangular. Most others are rectangular. Hindu flags are usually saffron. Sikh flags are yellow with the khanda kirpan emblem in black. Muslims opted for green with crescent moon and star.

With all this confusion of flags, how did we evolve the Tricolour as our National Flag? The story is very well told in A National Flag for India: Rituals, Nationalism & Politics of Sentiment (Permanent Black) by Arunadhati Virmani. She was reader in history at Delhi University and now is professor in Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociale in Marseille (France). She has done meticulous research on the subject and put life into what may appear at first sight a footnote in a book on Indian history. There were many designs made to represent India starting with Sister Nivedita’s Vajra design in 1909.

Bhikaji Cama unfurled one of red colour with the sun, a crescent moon and Vande Mataram printed in Devanagari. One Venkayya submitted as many as 16 designs for consideration. C. Rajagopalachari made a tricolour in 1923 in white, green and red with the charkha imprinted in the middle. Believe it or not, Lord Mountbatten designed one for Pakistan with the Union Jack in one corner. Finally, came the flag as we know it today with the circular emblem printed on white, saffron and green.

India is way head of other Third World countries in the field of literacy

To remind us of its importance is Shyam Lal Gupta’s stirring song, Vijai vishwa tiranga pyara, jhanda ooncha rahey hamaara. Read this book. You will enjoy it.

India’s book trade

One of the many ways to judge the development of a country is by the number and kinds of books its people read. It will reveal the ratio of literacy and the main preoccupations of its population. India is not doing too badly. It is way ahead of the so-called Third World countries. Perhaps the pioneer in the field of producing cheap paperbacks in Hindi is Dina Nath Malhotra of Hind Pocket Books he set up in 1958. Instead of publishing editions limited to under 5,000, he published a novel in Hindi with 50,000 copies. The experiment paid off. He has never looked back. He was given the acclaim he deserved, being the first Indian to get Unesco’s International Book Award in 1988.

He has been a member of the National Book Council of India ever since its inception, and was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2000 for promoting book reading in the country. Dina Nath, now in his late eighties, has put his life’s experience in Book Publishing: Principles & Practices (Clarion). It tells you all about the people who go into the making of a book—author, publisher, printer, salesman, reviewer and reader. The generators—the author and the publisher—get a measly 10 per cent each. The salesman—the bookseller—gets a whopping 40 per cent; the rest is the price of the paper, printing and binding. I, as an author, feel that I deserve more; so does the publisher, who stakes his money on the venture and often loses out. The bookseller gets much more than his due.

Dina Nath regards publishing as a noble profession. He has nothing to say about the ignoble practices indulged in by some of his fraternity. Quite a few don’t tell authors how their books are doing, nor pay them a paisa. Then there is a whole lot of publishers starting with the Writers’ Workshop of Kolkata who make authors pay for their publications. They are known as vanity publishers, who thrive on the authors’ desire to see their names in print on books. So, not all is hunky-dory with Indian publishing as Dina Nath Malhotra would have us believe. He also writes that India has no literary agencies. That may be true about our own bhaashaas, but there is certainly one for English: Renuka Chatterji’s Osian.

How old are you?

While waiting for my first appointment in the reception room of a new physician, I noticed his certificate, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered that a tall, handsome boy with the same name Bhim Sain Verma had been in my pre-medical class some 40 years ago. Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding grey-haired man with the deeply-lined face was way too old to have been my classmate.

After he had examined me, I asked him if he had attended the local degree college. "Yes", he replied. "When did you graduate?" I asked. "In 1974. Why?" "You were in my class." I exclaimed. He looked at me closely and then asked: "What did you teach?"

Wrong timing

Banta: "What made you oversleep this morning?"

Santa: "There are seven of us in the house and the alarm was only set for six".

(Contributed by Shivtar Singh Dalla, Ludhiana)