Impression

Introduction

In the previous chapter, we have seen that the colours of the flag were endowed with specific understanding of the past and history. In the decade of 1920s, with an overcast sky of communal violence, these notions of the past not merely gave popularity to the equation between colour and community but later also forced Congress leaders to rethink the design of the flag. The call of the hour was to distantiate between colours and their identification with communities. This rejection of the communal interpretation of the flag (what we see in the decision of the Congress Working Committee while giving a verdict on the new design of the official flag of the Congress in 1931) was guided both by the violent happenings of the decade of 1920s as well as by the concerns to protect the future. A flag with non-communal colours was needed to project an ideal future order. This coming together of the encoded past along with a desired future gave the tricolour its unique status and it jostled to invade every nook and corner in the coming decades of the 1930s and 1940s.

Soon after the Indian National Congress came out with an official flag in 1931, a lady running Siddhananda Medical Hall in Madras wrote a letter to Jawahar Lal Nehru. She was seeking a favour with a testimonial expressing Nehru's opinion about one of the products of Siddhananda Medical Hall. This was ‘Nehru Tooth Paste’. She sent three tubes for the personal use of Nehru and his sisters and further requested to get a certificate from Mrs Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru's beloved sisters.