Who is Pingali Venkayya? Meet the man who designed India’s first national flag
Every year we unfurl our National Flag on August 15 and January 26 for Independence Day and Republic Day respectively.
Have we ever wondered who designed our Tricolour?
On August 2,1876 in Bhatlapenumarru, Madras Presidency, British India (today’s Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh), Pingali Venkayya (or Venkaiah) was born into a Telegu Brahmin family.
Venkayya was educated at Cambridge and grew up to become a polymath - with interests in geology, agriculture, education and even in languages. In 1913, he gave a full length speech in Japanese in Bapatla which made him famous as ‘Japan Venkayya’. Machilipatnam was then a big center for fishing and textiles. His interest in researching cotton, especially a particular variety called Cambodia Cotton, gave him another nickname ‘Patti (cotton) Venkayya’.
Pingali was also a Gandhian ideologist. He met Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) when he was posted there as part of the British Indian Army. There an incident when the soldiers had to salute the Union Jack (the British national flag), stayed in his mind. After returning to India, he dedicated himself to the creation of a national flag for the country. In 1916, he even published a booklet on flags of other nations, ‘A National Flag for India’, offering nearly thirty designs of what could make the Indian flag.
In search of a flag
Throughout all Congress sessions between 1918 and 1921, he relentlessly put forward the idea of having a national flag for India. He worked as a lecturer at Andhra National College in Machilipatnam in those years. With the help of a fellow lecturer, he continued his quest to design India’s own flag.
In March 1921, Mahatma Gandhi first proposed a need for a national flag at a meeting of Indian National Congress in Vijayawada (then Bezawada). Venkayya met Gandhi there at the Victoria Museum and presented a rudimentary design of the Swaraj Flag on a Khadi bunting. It consisted of two red and green bands to symbolise Hindus and Muslims, respectively - the two major religious communities in the country at that time - and the charkha represented Swaraj. His design had given an identity to India and its people.
On the advice of Gandhi, Pingali added a white band over the red and green. The white represented peace and the rest of the communities living in India. Though this first tricolour was not officially accepted by the All India Congress Committee (AICC), it began to be hoisted on all Congress occasions.
The redesign
Gandhiji’s approval had made the Swaraj Flag sufficiently popular and it was in use till 1931, when a Congress Working Committee made some changes to the flag’s design. The Committee came up with a new tricolour by replacing the red with saffron and changed the order of the colours, with saffron on top followed by white and then green. The charkha was placed on the white band in the middle. Post-Independence, a national flag committee under President Rajendra Prasad replaced the charkha with the Ashok Chakra.
Pingali who died on July 4, 1963 was posthumously honoured with a postage stamp in 2009 for his contribution to the Indian freedom struggle. In 2014, his name was also proposed for the Bharat Ratna. In 2016, the then Urban Development Minister, M. Venkaiah Naidu renamed the All India Radio station Vijayawada after Venkayya and unveiled his statue on its premises.
This year in March, we completed 100 years of our Tricolour.
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