India's symbols and national days

The Tiranga — the tricolour — was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947, weeks before independence. It has three equal horizontal bands: India saffron at the top, white in the middle, and India green at the bottom, in a 3:2 ratio, with a navy blue chakra of 24 spokes at the centre of the white band.

The chakra is the dharma chakra from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath. It replaced the spinning wheel of the pre-independence Congress flag, and Radhakrishnan described it in the Assembly as representing the wheel of law and the principle that there is life in movement and death in stagnation.

The Assembly deliberately declined to assign religious meanings to the colours. The widely repeated gloss — saffron for courage, white for truth, green for prosperity — is interpretation, not official definition.

The Flag Code of India governs display. It was substantially liberalised in 2002, permitting private citizens to fly the flag on any day, and amended again in 2021 and 2022 to permit machine-made and polyester flags and display at night on an open-air flagpole. Earlier rules restricting flag use to specified days and to hand-spun khadi are frequently still quoted and are out of date.

The core rules remain: the flag must never touch the ground or water, must not be used as drapery, clothing or a receptacle, must not be flown upside down, must not carry lettering, and must be disposed of privately and with dignity when damaged. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971 makes disrespect a criminal offence.

The state emblem, adopted on 26 January 1950, is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka from Sarnath — four lions standing back to back, of which three are visible in the two-dimensional version, on an abacus bearing a horse and a bull separated by chakras. Below it in Devanagari is Satyameva Jayate, 'truth alone triumphs', from the Mundaka Upanishad.

Use of the emblem is restricted by the State Emblem of India (Prohibition of Improper Use) Act 2005 to constitutional authorities and government bodies. Private use is an offence, which is why legitimate government correspondence carries it and unofficial documents claiming authority sometimes carry a subtly wrong version — a useful thing to notice.

Jana Gana Mana, written by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali, was adopted as the national anthem on 24 January 1950. The full rendition takes about 52 seconds; a shorter version of the first and last lines takes about 20. Standing to attention is expected during a rendition, and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act covers deliberate disruption.

Vande Mataram, by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, was adopted as the national song at the same time and was declared to have equal status with the anthem — but a different role and different protocol. It has a longer history in the freedom movement than the anthem does.

Other national symbols: the tiger as national animal, the peacock as national bird, the lotus as national flower, the banyan as national tree, the mango as national fruit, and the Ganges river dolphin as national aquatic animal. The national calendar is the Saka era, used alongside the Gregorian in government publications.

Only three days are national holidays observed across the entire country: Republic Day on 26 January, marking the Constitution coming into force in 1950; Independence Day on 15 August, marking 1947; and Gandhi Jayanti on 2 October, Mohandas Gandhi's birth anniversary, also observed internationally as the Day of Non-Violence.

Republic Day is marked by the parade on Kartavya Path in New Delhi, with a foreign head of state or government traditionally as chief guest, and by the Beating Retreat ceremony on 29 January. Independence Day is marked by the Prime Minister's address from the Red Fort.

Everything else is state-determined. The Union government gazettes a list of holidays for its own offices, divided into compulsory and restricted, and each state government issues its own list for state offices. Banks follow a separate list issued under the Negotiable Instruments Act, which is why a bank can be closed when other offices are open.

This is why the calendar differs so much regionally: Pongal and Tamil New Year in Tamil Nadu, Onam in Kerala, Bihu in Assam, Baisakhi in Punjab, Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra, Ugadi in Karnataka and the Telugu states, Durga Puja across Bengal and the east, and Chhath in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Most festivals follow lunar calendars, so their Gregorian dates move each year — which is why the annual gazette matters and why holiday dates cannot be memorised.

Restricted holidays are an unusual and useful feature: employees may choose a small number from a longer list, which accommodates a workforce of many faiths without closing offices for all of them.