Abstract
The tricoloured flag India adopted in 1947 to mark its independence from Britain, the Tiraṅgā, results in fact from the combination of four elements whose official and popular semiotics has traversed several waves of negotiations during the decades preceding the foundation of contemporary India. Three of these elements are its equally sized, horizontal colours: saffron, white, and green; theirs is a chronicle of embeddedness in both confessional and secularist narratives which had shaped ancient and modern India, whereby the colour at the top—the saffron—best testifies to the intensity of and controversies surrounding mentioned narratives. Related struggles are subsumed under the choice to replace the 1921/1931 spinning wheel (charkha) with the blue-stained Ashok/Dharma Chakra, the “Wheel of Law”. Significant legal accounts coalesce indeed into the Tiraṅgā, from both spiritual-philosophical and positivistic standpoints. Despite conveying a supposedly ethnicity-neutral identity, the Chakra is often replaced with sectarian symbols by “minority” movements when they protest against the Hindu majority’s legislative radicalism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This observation encompasses the population as a whole and especially those involved in maritime trade, but definitely not the rulers with their diplomatic symbols and iconographic apparatuses; in fact, most Indian monarchs at that time (Golconda’s Qutub Shahis, Mughal/Moghul Emperors, Kings of Mysore, Lodi Sultans of Delhi, Kings of Bisnegar, etc.) did have a defining flag already. Of particular interest here, the Bhagwā Dhwaj or Kesariyā Patākā, which was the swallowtailed flag of the Maratha Confederacy, was fully saffron-coloured (MacDougall 2014, pp. 41, 121).
- 2.
See infra. The key Indian flag-related provision is the 2002 Flag Code of India, which updated and systematised the 1971 Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act No. 69, and the 1950 Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act No. 12.
- 3.
Mukherjee (2015), p. 176, two emphases added.
- 4.
Which is probably why it is preferably children-catching instead of overelaborated; nurturing a sense of attachment among the youth is a primary policy objective, and to do so, a country needs to start from its primary-school students. After the French Revolution too, ‘[t]he ultimate goal, as invoked in a poem written for the 1790 Festival of Federation, was to behold “[t]ous les enfans de la patrie/S’embrassant à la fois sous le même drapeau”’ (Keitner 2007, p. 83).
- 5.
Refer, most recently, to the large-scale protests triggered by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act approved on 11 December 2019 by the Parliament of India, that discriminates the Muslim component of India’s polity. Given that the constitutional ability to directly and indirectly uphold freedom of religion proved a major success factor for the Indian democracy (Mitra 2013, p. 236), the promulgation of mentioned Act represented a truly unfortunate and reactionary event. This notwithstanding, other scholars contended that in fact the Indian Constitution had always contained biased pro-Hindu provisions, starting exactly with those related to religious freedom; see e.g. Singh (2005). Furthermore, and one would say, astonishingly, citizenship is one of the three subject-matters not requiring enhanced majority to be amended in the Constitution (Gardbaum 2013, p. 31 ftn. 33).
- 6.
Paraphrasing Harvard’s postcolonialist Homi K. Bhabha.
- 7.
Supreme Court of India, Union of India v. Naveen Jindal & Anr., Appeal (civil) 2920 of 1996, Judgement delivered on January 23, 2004 [pp. 2-3, emphasis added].
- 8.
Author’s translation from the original in Italian.
- 9.
‘Most non-Indians would identify the band of color running across the top of the flag as orange, but to the locals it is saffron’ (Jacobsohn 2003, pp. 5–6).
- 10.
Emphasis added.
- 11.
In visual semiotics, “coloreme” refers to the basic cognitive ‘element of visual language […], an area of pictorial surface that can be perceived in one glance […]. In perception, the coloremes are assembled according to a set of rules, which Saint-Martin draws from Gestalt psychology, topology, and various theories of color’ (Manovich 1991, pp. 500–501). However, interestingly, while ‘[s]earching for the mechanisms of pictorial signification applicable to all pictures, [semioticians] repeatedly f[e]ll back on the intellectualizations that emerged in the modern discourses on art’ (ibid.).
- 12.
Krishnananda (1994), p. 32. In this excerpt, both the fire and the sun arguably attach a yellow/orange tonality to the visuality.
- 13.
Also as a challenge to the British trade of the Malwa opium along the same commercial routes—see Peabody (2003), p. 135.
- 14.
This explains why, supra, we indicated that saffron was already present and used in India from time immemorial. What matters the most for the sake of this essay is that despite the differences in the actual referenced substance, “saffron” (whatever that meant) could be mentioned to trigger a sense of (religious, but not only) continuity in the public imaginary and to “sell” such sense to the general population for identification with saffron-related symbols. In other words, “Indian” and “proper” saffron were discoursively merged as to found the new State on their contributions to India’s internal and external history.
- 15.
Darby (1998), p. 47.
- 16.
Moreover, ‘the Mewar rulers committed jauhar in 1303, 1534 and 1567 when resisting superior Muslim forces. Jauhar is probably a Rajput custom from Central Asia that was practised when confronted with certain defeat. To preserve their honour, Rajput women and children were consigned to death by fire, and then Rajput men purified themselves, donned saffron-coloured robes symbolising martyrdom, and fought until death’ (Ramusack 2004, p. 19). However, it is not possible to establish with certainty that specifically the saffron pigmentation had a deliberate nexus with mentioned cathartic spirit of (masculine) self-immolation.
- 17.
To the extent that by “saffron wave” one refers to the BJP ascension in Indian politics—read further at Thachil (2009).
- 18.
See further Madriaga (2007), p. 65, about the incredible variance in replies American citizens provided when asked about the meaning of the colours in the US flag. As the author himself admits, this pleads in favour of fixing a public interpretation able to dissipate the most extremist private ones.
- 19.
For a brilliant reconceptualisation of green and saffron as metaphors for caste-related environmental policies in India, refer to Sharma (2014).
- 20.
Penjore and Kinga (2002), p. 11. Curiously, there are flags like those of Nepal and Ohio which are neither rectangular nor squared, yet they flutter; the shape is obviously a matter of international standardisation rather than flying practicality.
- 21.
Mahatma Gandhi talking to Tai Chi Tao (President of the Examination Yuan of the Chinese Government), 23 November 1940, as reported in Tan (1998), pp. 38–39.
- 22.
‘Of those counted as cotton spinners in the census of 1881, 90% were female’ (Haynes 2012, p. 45).
- 23.
‘Although the […] spinning wheel did spread widely throughout Southeast Asia, the system was designed to absorb the time of household women, and not in most cases to produce competitively for the market’ (Reid 2009, p. 40).
- 24.
The reader is advised to appreciate the spelling difference between “charkha” and “chakra”.
- 25.
Footnoting omitted.
- 26.
Vajpeyi (2012), pp. 40–41, emphasis added.
- 27.
The concept of dharma cannot be accurately translated into English. Roughly speaking, its meaning might be assumed to stand midway in between “rule of law” and “pursuance of a morally-edifying social life”.
- 28.
[emphases in the original]. By way of labelling it with the benefit of hindsight, this might well be defined as a “constitutional monarchy” where the Constitution is not systematically written and the “spirit of the people” plays a vital role within the societal rule-adjusting process. This is what the British wiped out.
- 29.
Labelling Nehru as a “modernist” might sound misleading, insofar as his policies were pursued under the London label of “Fabian Socialism”.
- 30.
Bleiker (2004), p. 99.
- 31.
Palmisano and Pannofino (2017), pp. 10–11.
- 32.
Indeed, see the works by Max Weber (1864–1920) and namely his acknowledgement that traditional religions like Hinduism and Buddhism were factually impossible to practice under the rules of calculus, rationality, and natural/labour exploitation that modernity and capitalism imposed upon them—refer e.g. to Bocock (1992), p. 255.
- 33.
This notwithstanding, the reader is reminded that legal restrictions applied till recently to the flag’s display, before a Supreme Court’s pronouncement turned a state monopoly into a right granted to the whole citizenry.
- 34.
Emphasis added.
- 35.
This is further and more prosaically evidenced by the fact that all secularist symbology of independent India did not even loosely consider drawing on the railway, which was the most successful colonial symbol of laboriousness and progress under the aegis of the East India Railway and Great Indian Peninsular Railway “state”-owned companies.
- 36.
Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII (1756).
- 37.
James Burgh (1714–1775), reported in Claeys (1994), p. 91.
- 38.
- 39.
Kolstø (2006), p. 697.
- 40.
Maqbool Fida Husain v. Raj Kumar Pandey, Crl. Revision Petition Nos. 282/07—114/2007 & 280/2007, 8 May 2008.
- 41.
Exactly 4 months later; read further at Rose (2016), pp. 262–263.
- 42.
天下, or “All-Under-Heaven”; see further Rigby (2013).
- 43.
Nussbaum (1996), pp. 7–15.
- 44.
That is, the Commonwealth of Nations, an intergovernmental organisation of sovereign States not to be confused with the much narrower Commonwealth Realm (whose jurisdiction theoretically extends over, inter alia, Canada and Australia).
- 45.
Especially when it is going to lead a coalition of non-aligned, pacifist countries (Brown 2009, p. 301).
- 46.
Nevertheless, ‘Buddhism in India [has] never had a central ecclesiastic institution with the authority to decide matters of doctrine or law’ (Walser 2005, p. 95).
- 47.
Similarly, in Japan, Nishida ‘bridge[d] the seemingly insurmountable gap recognized in Western epistemology between the knowing subject and the known object [by disrupting] the dichotomy through a kind of phenomenological introspection: the primal nondiscrimination of subject-object in one’s concrete immediacy, entailing a rejection of the entire debate between materialism and idealism that has occupied much of the history of Western philosophy’ (Krummel 2014, p. 268).
- 48.
Nation, in this case, is used properly as to identify a community of people sharing common ethnical traits such as language, customs, memory, religion, mythology, etc. This term is not employed as a synonymous for “State/country”, nor—in open disagreement with some scholars—for a purely ‘mental construct’ as e.g. Ting (2008, p. 461) does. Accordingly, India (federal country, or “the State” under international relations/law) contains not only multiple States (administrative divisions), but also—and not necessarily overlappingly—multiple nations (social groups). One consequence is that “nationals” refers to those belonging to one of India’s nations, whilst “citizens” refers mostly to those holding citizenship of India as a whole. More abstractly, the tension is between nations—but also countries!—being ‘imagined political communities’ (Anderson 2006, p. 6) and national identities standing for ‘a complex of common ideas, concepts or perception schemes [including symbols] of related emotional attitudes intersubjectively shared within a specific group of persons, all of which are internalized through “national” socialization’ (De Cillia et al. 1999, p. 153). The country can be a legal fiction, yet the nation never is: it always manifests itself concretely and it is made of expressible ties among its members. Similiter, country symbols may easily be fictitious, whilst national ones are arguably more proximate to the populations’ sentiments and mythology: like “citizenship” and “nationality”, juridically, are not synonymous, country- and nation-wide artistic-political symbologies are not so, either.
- 49.
Haldar (2007), p. 71.
- 50.
Emphasis added.
- 51.
Especially Chapter “Dislocations. Light and Colour, Flags and Identifications”.
- 52.
Krishnananda (1994), p. 12.
- 53.
In his Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie (1670), Samuel Parker (Bishop of Oxford) already commented that ‘external symbols are “changeable according to the variety of customs and places”, so that what is piety in one culture is superstition in another. All “actions are made significant by agreement” […] once the sovereign’s “public conscience” had pronounced’ (Goldie 1991, p. 614). Similarly, Adler (2014, pp. 174–176) built on recent American case-law to conclude societies and legal communities run the risk that ‘[t]he visual symbol is so powerful it may overpower the speaker. He may not be able to control its meaning. […] Visual images by their nature cannot be confined. In short, you can’t capture the flag. [… T]he flag is so powerful, so mystical and awe-inspiring that it is no longer an idea, no longer speech’, but multiple speeches at once, under the religious-like umbrella of blind idolatry.
References
Adler AM (2014) The first amendment and the second commandment. In: Wagner A, Sherwin RK (eds) Law, culture and visual studies. Springer, Berlin, pp 161–178
Agamben G (2009) What is an apparatus? And other essays. Standford University Press, Stanford
Agrawala VS (1964) Chakra-Dhvaja: the wheel flag of India. Banaras Hindu UP, Varanasi
Al-Tawil H (2008) Islam: science and technology in the golden age. In: Ackermann ME, Schroeder MJ, Terry JJ, Jiu-Hwa LU, Whitters MF (eds) Encyclopedia of World History: the expanding World 600 c.e. to 1450 – Volume II. Facts on File, New York, pp 208–210
Anand A (2019) The saffron surge: untold story of RSS leadership. Prabhat Prakashan, New Delhi
Andersen WK, Damle SD (1987) The brotherhood in Saffron: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Vistaar, New Delhi
Anderson BRO’G (2006) Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, 3rd edn. Verso, London
Appadurai A (1981) Worship and conflict under colonial rule: a South Indian case. Cambridge University Press, New York
Armitage DR (2013) Foundations of modern international thought. Cambridge University Press, New York
Armour L (2009) Metaphysics, morals, and politics: McTaggart’s theory of the good and the good life. In: Sweet W (ed) The moral, social and political philosophy of the British idealists. Imprint Academic, Exeter, pp 153–174
Bagassi M, Macchi L (2016) The interpretative function and the emergence of unconscious analytic thought. In: Macchi L, Bagassi M, Viale R (eds) Cognitive unconscious and human rationality. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 43–75
Balaganapathi D (2015) The richness of Indian symbolism and changing perspectives. In: Chkheidze P, Thơ HT, Pasko Y (eds) Symbols, cultures and identities in a time of global interchange. The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington D.C., pp 263–285
Bandyopadhyay S (2009) Decolonization in South Asia: meanings of freedom in post-independence West Bengal, 1947-52. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Basu T, Datta P, Sarkar S, Sarkar T, Sen S (1993) Khaki shorts and saffron flags: a critique of the Hindu Right. Orient Blackswan, Hyderabad
Bayly CA (1986) The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930. In: Appadurai A (ed) The social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 285–321
Becker JC et al (2017) What do national flags stand for? An exploration of associations across 11 countries. J Cross Cultural Psychol 48(3):335–352
Berger DL (2015) Encounters of mind: luminosity and personhood in Indian and Chinese thought. SUNY Press, Albany
Bhattacharjea MS (1998) Gandhi and Mao: national identity for an alternative future. In: Tan C (ed) Across the Himalayan gap: an Indian quest for understanding China. New Delhi, Gyan, pp 105–116
Bhattacharya S (2011) Talking back: the idea of civilization in the India nationalist discourse. Oxford University Press, New Delhi
Bleiker R (2004) Popular dissent, human agency and global politics. Cambridge University Press, Sydney
Bleiker R (2009) Aesthetics and world politics. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Bleiker R (2017) In search of thinking space: reflections on the aesthetic turn in international political theory. Millennium J Int Stud 45(2):258–264
Blundell D (2013) Dr B. R. Ambedkar and Buddhism in the perspective of the cultural unity of India. In: Bhattacharya S (ed) Cultural unity of India. Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata, pp 355–372
Bocock R (1992) The cultural formations of modern society. In: McPhail Hall S, Gieben B (eds) Formations of modernity. Polity, Cambridge, pp 229–274
Boesch C (2015) Similarities between chimpanzee and human culture. In: Gelfand MJ, Chiu C-y, Hong Y-y (eds) Handbook of advances in culture and psychology, vol 5. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 1–37
Boyer PR (1990) Tradition as truth and communication: a cognitive description of traditional discourse. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Bradfield EL (2014) ‘The diversity of color: an analysis of crosscultural color symbolism’. Unpublished BA Thesis in Behavioural Sciences at Andrews University
Bradley M (2013) Colour as synaesthetic experience in antiquity. In: Butler S, Purves AC (eds) Synaesthesia and the Ancient senses. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 127–140
Brass PR (1994) The politics of India since Independence, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York
Breckenridge CA, van der Veer P (1993) Preface: orientalism and the postcolonial predicament. In: Breckenridge CA, van der Veer P (eds) Orientalism and the postcolonial predicament: perspectives on South Asia. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp 1–22
Brenner-Idan A (1982) Colour terms in the old testament. JSOT, Sheffield
Brown RM (2009) Reviving the past: Post-independence architecture and politics in India’s long 1950s. Interv Int J Postcolonial Stud 11(3):293–315
Brownell FG (2015) ‘Converge and unification: the National Flag of South-Africa (1994) in historical perspective’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in History at the University of Pretoria
Cell JW (1992) Hailey: a study in British imperialism, 1872-1969. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Chakrabarti S (2012) The Indian National Flag unfurled through philately. Niyogi, New Delhi
Charteris-Black J (2007) The communication of leadership: the design of leadership style. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Chatterjee P (1993) The Nation and its fragments: colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Chaudhuri KN (1978) The trading world of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Chowdhry NK (2018) S. Chand’s social sciences – Class X (revised edition). S. Chand School Books, New Delhi
Claeys G (ed) (1994) Utopias of the British enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
da Costa PF (2016) Medicine, trade and empire: Garcia de Orta’s colloquies on the simples and drugs of India (1563) in context. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Danchev A (2016) On good and evil and the grey zone. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
Darby P (1998) The fiction of imperialism: reading between international relations and postcolonialism. Cassell, London
Darwin J (2015) Memory of empire in Britain: a preliminary view. In: Rothermund D (ed) Memories of post-imperial nations: the aftermath of decolonisation, 1945-2013. Cambride University Press, New York, pp 18–37
De Bortoli M, Maroto J (2001) ‘Colours Across Cultures: Translating Colours in Interactive Marketing Communications’, https://globalpropaganda.com/articles/TranslatingColours.pdf
De Cillia R, Reisigl M, Wodak R (1999) The discursive construction of national identity. Discourse Soc 10(2):149–173
Decourcy E (2010) Just a grain of salt? Symbolic construction during the Indian nationalist movement. Melb Hist J 38(1):57–72
Delanty G (2013) Formations of European modernity: a historical and political sociology of Europe. Palgrave, Basingstoke
Deming D (2010) Science and technology in world history – volume two: early christianity, the rise of India and the middle ages. McFarland, Jefferson
Derks H (2012) History of the opium problem: the assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950. Brill, Leiden
Desai R (1999) Indian business culture: an insider’s guide. Butterworth, Oxford
Dobe TS (2015) Hindu Christian Faqir: modern monks, global christianity, and Indian sainthood. Oxford University Press, New York
Douzinas C (2007) Human rights and empire: the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Eaton N (2013) Colour, art and empire: visual culture and the nomadism of representation. I.B.Tauris, London
Edoho-Eket N (2012) ‘Authenticating religion: religious images and the construction of transnational hinduism’. Unpublished MA Thesis in Religious Studies at Florida State University
Ehrlich J (2020) Anxiety, Chaos, and the Raj. Historical J 63(3):1–11
Elgenius G (2005) Expressions of Nationhood: National symbols and ceremonies in contemporary Europe. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science
Elgenius G (2007) The origin of European national flags. In: Eriksen TH, Jenkins R (eds) Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 14–30
Eriksen TH (2007) Some questions about flags. In: Eriksen TH, Jenkins R (eds) Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 1–13
Farelo M (2015) Garcia de Orta, the Faculty of Medicine at Lisbon, and the Portuguese overseas endeavor at the beginning of the sixteenth century. J Medieval Iberian Stud 7(2):218–231
Farrell G (1997) Indian music and the west. Clarendon, Oxford
Firth RW (1973) Symbols—public and private. Allen&Unwin, London
Forbes G (1996) Women in Modern India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Gaines AD (2005) Race: local biology and culture in mind. In: Casey C, Edgerton RB (eds) A companion to psychological anthropology: modernity and psychocultural change. Blackwell, Malden, pp 274–297
Gandhi L (2006) Affective communities: anticolonial thought, Fin-de-Siècle radicalism, and the politics of friendship. Duke University Press, Durham
Gardbaum S (2013) The new commonwealth model of constitutionalism: theory and practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ghai Y (2010) Constitutionalism and the challenge of ethnic diversity. In: Heckman JJ, Nelson RL, Cabatingan L (eds) Global perspectives on the rule of law. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 279–302
Ghazal AN (2010) Islamic reform and Arab nationalism: expanding the crescent from the mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (1880s-1930s). Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Ghosh S (2018) On truth and taxes: a material history of early Stamp’t paper. In: Balachandran A, Pant R, Raman B (eds) Iterations of law: legal histories from India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, pp 210–241
Goldie M (1991) The reception of Hobbes. In: Burns GH (ed) The Cambridge history of political thought 1450-1700. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 589–615
Goodrich P (2013) Devising law: on the philosophy of legal emblems. New York Law School Law Rev 57(1):134–151
Guha R (ed) (2010) Makers of modern India. Penguin, New Delhi
Guha R (2017) ‘Does Gandhi have a caste? He had the ability to be of all castes and no caste at all’, The Indian Express, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/does-gandhi-have-a-caste-4700974/
Guha-Thakurta T (1992) The making of a new “Indian” art: artists, aesthetics and nationalism in bengal, c. 1850-1920. Cambridge University Press, New Delhi
Gupta A (2004) Imagining nations. In: Nugent D, Vincent JE (eds) A companion to the anthropology of politics. Blackwell, Malden, pp 267–281
Guthrie WB (2009) The trade-language origin of “turmeric”. Word 60(1):79–90
Hałas E (2002) Symbolism and social phenomena: toward the integration of past and current theoretical approaches. Eur J Soc Theory 5(3):351–366
Haldar P (2007) Law, orientalism and postcolonialism: the jurisdiction of the Lotus Eaters. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Hansen TB (1999) The Saffron wave: democracy and hindu nationalism in modern India. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Haynes DE (2012) Small town capitalism in western India: artisans, merchants, and the making of the informal economy, 1870–1960. Cambridge University Press, New Yorkc
Hermans HJM (2015) Human development in today’s globalizing world: implications for self and identity. In: Jensen LA (ed) The Oxford handbook of human development and culture: an interdisciplinary perspective. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 28–42
Hoagland E, Sarwal R (2010) Introduction: imperialism, the third world, and postcolonial science fiction. In: Hoagland E, Sarwal R (eds) Science fiction, imperialism and the third world: essays on postcolonial literature and film. McFarland, Jefferson, pp 5–19
Hogan PC (2008) Understanding Indian movies: culture, cognition, and cinematic imagination. University of Texas Press, Austin
Howard MC (2014) Transnationalism in ancient and medieval societies: the role of cross-border trade and travel. McFarland, Jefferson
Hussain S (2004) Label and literature: borders and spaces in postcolonial migrant literature in Australia. J Assoc Study Aust Lit 3:103–116
Hutchison E, Bleiker R (2008) Trauma emotional reconciliation: reconstituting identity and community after trauma. Eur J Soc Theory 11(3):385–403
Hutchison E, Bleiker R (2014) Theorizing emotions in world politics. Int Theory 6(3):491–514
Inden RB (2000) Orientalist constructions of India. In: Macfie AL (ed) Orientalism: a reader. New York University Press, New York, pp 277–284
Jacobsen KA (2010) Establishment of buddhist sacred space in contemporary India: the Ambedkarite Buddhism, Dalit civil religion and the struggle against social exclusion. In: Ben-Rafael E, Sternberg Y (eds) World religions and multiculturalism: a dialectic relation. Leiden, Brill, pp 219–236
Jacobsohn GJ (2003) The wheel of law: India’s secularism in comparative constitutional context. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Jacobsohn GJ (2006) An unconstitutional constitution? A comparative perspective. Int J Const Law 4(3):460–487
Jaffe J (2015) Ironies of colonial governance: custom and justice in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press, New York
Jaffrelot C (2012) The politics of caste identities. In: Dalmia V, Sadana R (eds) The Cambridge companion to modern Indian culture. Cambridge University Press, Delhi, pp 80–98
Jha S (2008) The Indian National flag as a site of daily plebiscite. Econ Political Weekly 43:102–111
Jha S (2014) Challenges in the history of colours: the case of saffron. Indian Econ Soc History Rev 51(2):199–229
Jha S (2016a) From sacred to commodity and beyond: colour and values in India. J Human Values 22(1):1–13
Jha S (2016b) Reverence, resistance and politics of seeing the Indian National Flag. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Jha S (2017) ‘The secret history of India’s flag’, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/08/the-secret-history-of-indias-flag/
Jois MR (1984) Legal and constitutional history of India: ancient legal, judicial and constitutional system. Universal Law Publishing, Delhi
Jones R (2011) Dreaming of a Golden Bengal: discontinuities of place and identity in South Asia. Asian Stud Rev 35(3):373–395
Jones CA, Ryan JD (2007) Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Facts on File, New York
Josh BS (2012) Asóka, historical discourse, and the post-colonial Indian State. In: Olivelle P, Leoshko J, Ray HP (eds) Reimagining Asóka: memory and history. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp 394–408
Kalia R (2006) Modernism, modernization and post-colonial India: a reflective essay. Plan Perspect 21(2):133–156
Kavuri-Bauer S (2011) Monumental matters: the power, subjectivity, and space of India’s Mughal architecture. Duke University Press, Durham
Kay P, Regier T (2007) Color naming universals: the case of Berinmo. Cognition 102(2):289–298
Keitner CI (2007) The paradoxes of nationalism: the French revolution and its meaning for contemporary Nation Building. SUNY Press, Albany
King RE (1999) Orientalism and religion: postcolonial theory, India and “the mystic East”. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Kling BB (1966) The blue mutiny: the Indigo disturbances in Bengal, 1839–1862. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Kolstø P (2006) National symbols as signs of unity and division. Ethnic Racial Stud 29(4):676–701
Koushik M (2013) ‘Reimagining “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim”: public theologies of citizenship and belonging in the Republic of India’. Unpublished Honours Thesis in Middle East Studies at Brown University
Krishnananda S (1994) A short history of religious and philosophic thought in India. The Divine Life Society, Rishikesh, https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/hist/Short_History.pdf
Krummel JWM (2014) Anontology and the issue of being and nothing in Kitarō Nishida. In: Liu JL, Berger DL (eds) Nothingness in Asian philosophy. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 263–283
Kulke H, Rothermund D (2004) A history of India, 4th edn. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Kumar K (1989) Secularism: its politics and pedagogy. Econ Political Weekly 24(45):2473–2476
Kumar S (2006) Gandhi meets primetime: globalization and nationalism in Indian television. University of Illinois Press, Chicago
Kumar S (2017) Interpreting the scales of justice: architecture, symbolism and semiotics of the Supreme Court of India. Int J Semiotics Law 30(4):637–675
Lally J (2019) ‘Colour as Commodity: Colonialism and the sensory worlds of South Asia’, Third Text Forum online, www.thirdtext.org/lally-colourascommodity
Lamb A (1975) Indian influence in ancient South-East Asia. In: Basham AL (ed) A cultural history of India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp 442–450
Landauer C (2015) Legal emblems and the return of the impressed. Yale J Law Human 27(2):291–330
Lannoy R (1971) The speaking tree: a study of Indian culture and society. Oxford University Press, New York
Lippens R (2017) Forward! Coding, recoding and recoding law in public art for urban regeneration. In: Amatrudo A, Rauxloh RE (eds) Law in popular belief: myth and reality. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp 125–140
Lucy JA (1997) The linguistics of “Color”. In: Hardin CL, Maffi L (eds) Color categories in thought and language. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 320–346
Ludden D (1999) An Agrarian history of South Asia. Cambridge University Press, New York
MacDougall P (2014) Naval resistance to Britain’s growing power in India, 1660-1800: the Saffron banner and the Tiger of Mysore. Boydell, Woodbridge
Madriaga M (2007) The star-spangled banner and “whiteness” in American national identity. In: Eriksen TH, Jenkins R (eds) Flag, Nation and symbolism in Europe and America. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 53–67
Magnus R, Kull K (2012) Roots of culture in the Umwelt. In: Valsiner J (ed) The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 649–661
Mahajan G (2005) Indian exceptionalism or Indian model: negotiating cultural diversity and minority rights in a democratic Nation-State. In: Kymlicka W, He B (eds) Multiculturalism in Asia. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 288–313
Malik P (2016) India’s nuclear debate: exceptionalism and the Bomb. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Manovich L (1991) Book reviews. Art Bull 73(3):500–502
Marshall PJ (1987) Bengal: the British bridgehead – Eastern India 1740-1828. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
McMillan A (2008) Deviant democratization in India. Democratization 15(4):733–749
Menski W (2019) The multiple roles of customary law in the shaping of the intercultural state in India. Revista General de Derecho Público Comparado 26:1–32
Metcalf BD, Metcalf TR (2001) A concise history of modern India, 2nd edn. Cambridge Universiy Press, New York
Mezzanzanica M (2016) Comprensione, simbolo, alterità: Aspetti antropologici dell’ermeneutica interculturale. Herméneutique et interculturalité 20(1):225–247
Millei Z (2019) Pedagogy of nation: a concept and method to research nationalism in young children’s institutional lives. Childhood 26(1):83–97
Miller D (1999) Group identities, national identities and democratic politics. In: Horton JJ, Mendus SL (eds) Toleration, identity and difference. Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp 103–125
Milner M Jr (1994) Status and sacredness: a general theory of status relations and an analysis of Indian Culture. Oxford Universtiy Press, New York
Mishra N (2015) India and colorism: the finer nuances. Wash Univ Global Stud Law Rev 14(4):725–750
Misra M (2007) Vishnu’s crowded temple: India since the Great Rebellion. Yale Universtiy Press, New Haven
Misra M (2016) The Indian Machiavelli: pragmatism versus morality, and the reception of the Arthasastra in India, 1905-2014. Modern Asian Stud 50(1):310–344
Mitra SK (2013) How exceptional is India’s Democracy? Path dependence, political capital, and context in South Asia. India Rev 12(4):227–244
Mrazek AJ, Harada T, Chiao JY (2015) Cultural neuroscience of identity development. In: McLean KC, Syed M (eds) The Oxford handbook of identity development. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 423–436
Mukherjee UP (2010) Postcolonial environments: nature, culture and the contemporary Indian Novel in English. Palgrave, Basingstoke
Mukherjee K (2015) ‘Chasing ghosts and making history: Ghosh, Tagore, and Postcolonial India’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in English at Michigan State University
Namakkal JL (2013) ‘Transgressing the boundaries of the nation: decolonization, migration, and identity in France/India, 1910-1972’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in History at the University of Minnesota
Nussbaum MC (1996) For love of country: debating the limits of patriotism. Beacon, Boston
Nymalm N, Plagemann J (2019) Comparative exceptionalism: universality and particularity in foreign policy discourses. Int Stud Rev 21(1):12–37
Pai SM (2013) Uttar Pradesh: new patterns of mobilization in the 1990s and beyond. In: Kohli A, Singh P (eds) Routledge handbook of Indian politics. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 261–269
Palmisano S, Pannofino N (2017) Changing the sacred: creative paths of religious experience. In: Palmisano S, Pannofino N (eds) Invention of tradition and syncretism in contemporary religions: sacred creativity. Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp 1–25
Pastoureau M (2001) Blue: the history of a color. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Peabody N (2003) Hindu kingship and polity in precolonial India. Cambridge Universtiy Presss, Cambridge
Penjore D, Kinga S (2002) The origin and description of the National Flag and National Anthem of The Kingdom of Bhutan. The Centre for Bhutan Studies, Thimphu
Perris KF (2012) Online learning in the open university systems of India and China: a comparison of responses to globalization. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Education at the University of Toronto
Pontin A (2016) ‘Rebranding e il significato dei colori’. Unpublished MA Thesis in Marketing and Communication at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, student number: 855577
Ponzanesi S (2004) Paradoxes of postcolonial culture: contemporary women writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora. SUNY Press, Albany
Prakash O (1998) European commercial enterprise in pre-colonial India. Cambridge Universtiy Press, New Delhi
Raj A (2007) ‘Ethnographic study of the creation and usage of diasporic capital for education and identity construction of Indian diasporic youth in Montreal’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Education at McGill University
Rajaratnam GP (1948) ‘Significance of the Wheel of Asoka in the Flag of Free India’, Transactions, 2, 1-11. The Indian Institute of Culture, Bangalore
Rajasingham-Senanayake D (2003) Diaspora and citizenship: forgotten routes of identity in Lanka. In: Parekh B, Singh G, Vertovec S (eds) Culture and economy in the Indian Diaspora. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames, pp 81–101
Ramusack BN (2004) The Indian princes and their states. Cambridge University Press, New York
Ray HP (2013) The choice of national symbols and cultural unity. In: Bhattacharya S (ed) Cultural unity of India. Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Kolkata, pp 373–400
Reid A (2009) Southeast Asian consumption of Indian and British Cotton Cloth, 1600-1850. In: Riello G, Roy T (eds) How India clothed the World: the World of South Asian textiles, 1500-1850. Brill, Leiden, pp 31–52
Rigby R (2013) ‘Tianxia 天下’, Australian Centre on China in the World (Australian National University), https://www.thechinastory.org/yearbooks/yearbook-2013/forum-politics-and-society/tianxia-%E5%A4%A9%E4%B8%8B/
Risso PA (1995) Merchants and faith: muslim commerce and culture in the Indian Ocean. Westview, Boulder
Roberson D, Davies I, Davidoff J (2000) Color categories are not universal: replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture. J Exp Psychol 129(3):369–398
Roberson D, Davidoff JB, Davies IRL, Shapiro LR (2005) Color categories: evidence for the cultural relativity hypothesis. Cognitive Psychol 50(4):378–411
Roberts SA (2013) Order and dispute: an introduction to legal anthropology, 2nd edn. Quid Pro, New Orleans
Rose F (2016) The Tyranny of Silence: how one cartoon ignited a global debate on the future of free speech. Cato Institute, Washington D.C
Roy S (2006) “A Symbol of Freedom”: the Indian flag and the transformations of nationalism, 1906-2002. J Asian Stud 65(3):495–527
Roy S (2007) Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism. Duke Universtiy Press, Durham
Saint-Martin F (1990) Semiotics of visual language. Indiana Universtiy Press, Bloomington
Saunders BAC, van Brakel J (1997) Are there nontrivial constraints on colour categorization? Behav Brain Sci 20(2):167–228
Scheper-Hughes N (2005) The politics of remorse. In: Casey C, Edgerton RB (eds) A companion to psychological anthropology: modernity and psychocultural change. Blackwell, Malden, pp 469–494
Segate RV (2019) Fragmenting cybersecurity norms through the language(s) of subalternity: India in “the East” and the global community. Columb J Asian Law 32(2):78–138
Sen AK (2005) The argumentative Indian: writings on Indian History, culture and identity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Sen AK (2012) From village elder to british judge: custom, customary law and tribal society. Orient Blackswan, New Delhi
Shani O (2015) Gandhi’s Salt March: paradoxes and tensions in the memory of nonviolent struggle in India. In: Reading A, Katriel T (eds) Cultural memories of nonviolent struggles: powerful times. Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp 32–51
Sharma MM (2014) Green and saffron: hindu nationalism and Indian environmental politics. Permanent Black, New Delhi
Shen Y (2015) Public discourses of contemporary China: the narration of the Nation in popular literatures, film, and television. Palgrave, Basingstoke
Simpson W (1896) Buddhist praying-wheel: a collection of material bearing upon the symbolism of the wheel and circular movements in custom and religious ritual. Macmillan, London
Singh G (2001) Resizing and reshaping the state: India from partition to the present. In: O’Leary B, Lustick IS, Callaghy TM (eds) Right-sizing the State: the politics of moving borders. Oxford Universtiy Press, New York, pp 138–167
Singh P (2005) Hindu Bias in India’s “Secular” constitution: probing flaws in the instruments of governance. Third World Q 26(6):909–926
Singh KV (2012) All about the flag of India: protocols, rules, etiquettes. Bennett, New Delhi
Singh KV (2013) Know your National Flag. Flag Foundation of India, New Delhi
Singh MP, Deva S (2005) The Constitution of India: symbol of unity in diversity. Jahrbuch des öffentlichen Rechts 53:649–686
Singh N, Tiwari A (2018) Indian color symbolism: a demonstration of color. Metaphors with visual identity. Psychol Res 8(1):26–28
Smith D (2003) Hinduism and modernity. Blackwell, Malden
Srisuchat A (2018) Indigenous thought on Indian traditions in Thailand. In: Saran S (ed) Cultural and civilisational links between India and Southeast Asia: historical and contemporary dimensions. Palgrave, New Delhi, pp 67–92
Stein B (2010) A history of India, 2nd edn. Wiley, Chichester
Sweet W (2009) British idealism and ethical thought in South Africa and India. In: Sweet W (ed) The moral, social and political philosophy of the British idealists. Imprint Academic, Exeter, pp 289–331
Tan C (ed) (1998) Across the Himalayan Gap: an Indian quest for understanding China. Gyan, New Delhi
Thachil T (2009) ‘The saffron wave meets the silent revolution: why the poor vote for Hindu nationalism in India’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Government at Cornell University
Tilghman BR (1970) The expression of emotion in the visual arts: a philosophical inquiry. Brill, Leiden
Tilghman BR (1991) Wittgenstein, ethics and aesthetics: the view from eternity. Macmillan, Basingstoke
Ting H (2008) Social construction of nation—a theoretical exploration. Nationalism Ethnic Politics 14(3):453–482
Travers R (2007) Ideology and empire in eighteenth-century India: the British in Bengal. Cambrdige Universtiy Press, New York
Trifonas PP (2015) Text and images. In: Trifonas PP (ed) International handbook of semiotics. Springer, Berlin, pp 1139–1152
Trivedi LN (2003) Visually mapping the “Nation”: Swadeshi politics in Nationalist India, 1920-1930. J Asian Stud 62(1):11–41
Trivedi LN (2007) Clothing Gandhi’s Nation: homespun and Modern India. Indiana UP, Bloomington
Vajpeyi A (2012) Righteous republic: the political foundations of modern India. Harvard Universtiy Press, Cambridge
Varma PK (2010) Becoming Indian: the unfinished revolution of culture and identity. Penguin, New Delhi
Venkayya P (1916) A National Flag for India. The Guardian Press, Madras
Verstegen I (2005) Arnheim, Gestalt and art: a psychological theory. Springer, Berlin
Verstegen I (2013) A realist theory of art history. Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames
Viale R (2016) Brain-based bounded creativity. In: Macchi L, Bagassi M, Viale R (eds) Cognitive unconscious and human rationality. MIT Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), pp 315–343
Vile JR (2018) The American flag: an encyclopedia of the stars and stripes in U.S. history, culture, and law. ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara
Virmani A (1999) National symbols under colonial domination: the nationalization of the Indian Flag, March–August 1923. Past Present 164(1):169–197
Vittorini S (2006) ‘Representing the Nation: Competing symbolic repertoires in India’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Performative and symbolic politics in South Asia at SOAS, University of London
Voegelin E (1957) Order and history – Volume II: the world of the Polis. Louisiana State Universtiy Press, Baton Rouge
Vogel FE, Hayes SL (1998) Islamic law and finance: religion, risk, and return. Brill, Leiden
Walser JG (2005) Nágárjuna in context: Maháyána Buddhism and early Indian culture. Columbia Universtiy Press, New York
Walter K (2011) ‘Prosopis, an Alien among the sacred trees of South India’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Cultural Anthropology at Helsinki University
Ward JDT (2016) ‘China-India Rivalry and the Border War of 1962: PRC perspectives on the collapse of China-India Relations, 1958-62’. Unpublished PhD Thesis in Oriental Studies at Oxford University
Weiss EA (2002) Spice crops. CABI, Wallingford
Wenzel M (2009) Zakes Mda’s representation of South African reality in ways of dying, the Madonna of excelsior and the whale caller. In: Meyer M (ed) Word and image in colonial and postcolonial literatures and cultures. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp 125–146
Wolpert S (2001) Gandhi’s passion: the life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Wright A (2005) The work of translation: Turkish modernism and the “Generation of 1914”. In: Hackforth-Jones J, Roberts M (eds) Edges of Empire: orientalism and visual culture. Blackwell, Malden, pp 139–161
Yanagihashi H (2004) A history of the early islamic law of property: reconstructing the legal development, 7th–9th Centuries. Brill, Leiden
Zetzel JEG (ed) (1999) Cicero: on the commonwealth and on the laws. Cambridge University Press, New York
Znamenski AA (2007) The beauty of the primitive: Shamanism and the Western imagination. Oxford University Press, New York
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Aasheerwad Dwivedi (Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Delhi) and Ms. Xiao Yi (MA Candidate in Education at King’s College London) for their generous suggestions and timely research assistance, respectively. I also wish to thank my doctoral supervisor, Professor Rostam Josef Neuwirth, for his helpful comments.
No funds have been allocated to this research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vecellio Segate, R. (2021). India’s Tiraṅgā at the Confluence of Postcolonial Nationalism, Cosmopolitan Aspirations, and Chromatic Social Cognition: “Saffronising” Democracy?. In: Wagner, A., Marusek, S. (eds) Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative. Law and Visual Jurisprudence, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32864-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32865-8
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)