On the 25th of August, 2019, a Sunday, while the entire Kashmir Valley was under a lockdown, the media reported that you, the state flag of J&K, had been pulled down from atop the civil secretariat.
Had you not been “relinquished”—that’s the technical term for the obliteration of a flag – you would have turned 68 last Sunday. Official history records your date of birth as 7th of June, 1952.
I don’t know if you were flagged down with dignity. Was there a ceremony? A gun salute? A guard of honour? The change of flag represents a formal transfer of authority; a change of command. The time honoured tradition is that this has to be ceremonial. I doubt if it was.
Forget the ceremony, were you even folded properly, on your longer side, as was the protocol laid out in the J&K Prevention of Insult to State Honours Act, 1979. This is not a vexillological trivia; it is about political history.
Have you been preserved in the Toshkhana as the valuable relic of the past? Or have you been treated as a symbol of the vanquished and displayed like a trophy? For the loss of flag has historically been considered a disgrace, defining as it does, the victor and the vanquished.
Worse still, were you labelled as a mistake of the past and shredded? Whatever may have happened at the gallows, you deserve to be remembered for posterity. You may have been eliminated from my present, you can’t be erased from my past.
Even though, you were only a government flag and not a national flag, somewhere deep down, I feel hurt and humiliated. People all over the country talk about you as if you were an enemy flag that was captured and carried away. What happened between 1951 and 2019 that the flag endorsed by the Parliament and the Constitution had to be disowned. I know that the Constitution of J&K was rescinded and hence the flag had to be relinquished. Yet, beyond the technicality.
You had for 68 years shared the dais and the distinction with the National flag. May be not as an equal but at least as a confederate. Like the first among equals, you carried a warrant of precedence. There was also more to you than administrative stature and political symbolism.
As a flag, you did arouse deep popular emotions in Kashmir. This was because your origin lay in the bloodshed of July 13, 1931. According to anecdotal history, a protestor picked up the blood-drenched shirt of a martyr, tied it to a stick and declared amidst acclamation, “This will be our flag”. When the bodies of 21 martyrs were taken for burial, the “banner of blood” led the procession. I don’t know of any flag anywhere in the world having such an emotive and evocative history.
Popular legend has it that a dying man handed over the “flag” to Sheikh Abdullah telling him that they had done their bit and it was now for him, to protect the honour. May be all this is the fertile imagination of the narrators; just a story that has survived generations. That’s how myths grow to become legends and legends become histories! This history says you were conceived on the 13th July 1931; by far the most important day in the annals of contemporary history and politics of Kashmir.
You were born eight years later. It was in 1939 that the National Conference adopted its own flag and referred to it as the “National Flag”. Kashmiris rallied around it to reject the monarch’s flag and his rule.
It took you another 13 years to gain an identity and a status. On the 7th of June, 1952, on a Saturday, the Constituent Assembly of J&K vested in you the pride of the people. It was Sheikh Abdullah himself who moved the resolution in the Assembly: “Resolved that the National Flag of the Jammu and Kashmir State shall be rectangular in shape and red in colour with three equidistant vertical strips of equal width next to the staff and a white plough in the middle with its handle facing the strips. The ratio to the length of flag shall be 2:3.” This resolution became Section 144 of the Constitution of J&K.
The design was almost identical to the party flag, except the three side stripes. This was hardly surprising since National Conference ran the state like a party state.
There was a lot of symbolism and style that day in June. Deservedly so. On Sheikh Abdullah’s request Chairman of the Constituent Assembly of J&K, G M Sadiq, unfurled you. Symbolically, your red colour, was drawn from the blood of the 13th July martyrs. Ideologically, as recommended by the left leaning Basic Principles Committee, it represented the working classes
As you were being showered with compliments and waived with hope and pride, G M Sadiq asked Sheikh Mohammad Akbar, MLA Tangmarg, to recite a special poem penned on you by Maulana Masoodi:
Lehraye Kashmir ka jhanda,
Hal walay dilgeer ka jhanda,
har dam Lehra, her soo Lehra,
Taba Kayaamat paiham Lehra
Flag of Kashmir, furl and fly high,
Flag of the desolate plower;
Fly forever on the expanse of land,
Till the day of reckoning, fly strong to stand.
Every member, and all the visitors stood up while the poem was being recited. By all accounts it was a poignant moment. Old timers say when the poem was being recited many members of the legislative assembly were in tears. These were the sentiments woven into the warp and weft of the state flag. Beyond the emotions, you represented a historic moment; an ideology. Howsoever, unfashionable it might be today. It had its moments of glory and for 68 years you were a flying proof of that!
But alas, the glory was not to live for long. Your ends started fraying even before the session ended. Syed Mir Qasim trimmed your trappings. He proposed an amendment to delete the word ‘National’ before the word ‘Flag’ in the first line of the resolution. So you were cut to size at birth to become a state flag. Sheikh Abdullah was only too eager to accept the change. It was ordained by Delhi.
As a part of the Delhi agreement your goose had been cooked on July 20th, 1952. Four days later, Nehru revealed to the Parliament that “the State flag was in no sense a rival to the National flag”. He confidently informed the house that this would be “made clear in the Constituent Assembly of the State.” This was even before Mir Qasim moved the resolution!
Three weeks later, on August 11th, 1952, Sheikh Abdullah echoed Nehru in the Constituent Assembly. He said, “The new State flag was in no sense a rival of the national flag. But for historical and other reasons connected with the freedom struggle in the State, the need for the continuance of this flag was recognised. The Union flag to which we continue our allegiance as a part of the Union will occupy the supremely distinctive place in the State.”
It was at this precise moment that you stood for accession with autonomy; not secession and independence. No wonder then for the separatists, you were a symbol of compromise and integration. For six decades and more, the integrationists trimmed you, the autonomists darned and re-hemmed you, and the separatists tried to dye you. You became a symbol without substance; but not without significance. How you eventually became a tarnished flag to be tattered is the story of Kashmir to be recorded for posterity. How the flag of a successful anti-monarchy revolution, became the symbol of a failed rebellion must be told with understanding and empathy after introspection. Till then, your epitaph will read: Born to a commitment, lived as a compromise and died controversially. The story of our lives!
Tailpiece:
More than the flag, what I associated the erstwhile Government of J&K with was its state emblem; a balanced and beautifully designed insignia. It used to adorn what brand strategists nowadays call collaterals. Created around the same time as the flag, the concept sketch was drawn by famous water colour artist, Dina Nath Wali. It was designed by Mohan Raina, a clerk in the Information Department. The central element of the logo was a lotus atop a lake bounded by two ploughs, ensconced in two ears of grain. Sitting on a triangular mountain peak, Jammu & Kashmir was inscribed in English. Three stripes within the lake represented the three regions.