Spinning wheel unites India! Lion flag rots Sri Lanka!!

Photo: Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic Spinning Wheel (Charkha) looks like the heart of the Indian flag it’s symbol of National Unity., Sabarmati Ashram, 1925.

By: R. Jayadevan

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955 predicted that after the British left the subcontinent, "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages".

He also thought it is likely that "an army of white janissaries, officered if necessary from Germany, will be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of the Hindu".

‘Sixty years after independence, India somehow survives, and the German janissaries are still awaited. But it remains an unnatural nation and, what’s more, an unlikely democracy’ progressing to be giant democracy in the world map.

The wheel at the center of the flag is the Ashoka Chakra the ancient Indian “Wheel of Life and Cosmic Order”. But then the Wikipedia page for the Ashoka Chakra, states:

‘The most visible use of the Ashoka Chakra today is at the center of the National flag of Republic of India (adopted on 22 July 1947), where it is rendered in a Navy-blue colour on a White background, by replacing the symbol of Charkha (Spinning wheel) of the pre-independence versions of the flag’.

For sixty years the chakra flag has become the symbol of unity and harmony in the great sub-continent nation. People from cross section of the diverse population are able to hold together and have proved that India will not decay into “barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages" envisaged by Winston Churchill.

In contrast India’s neighbour Sri Lanka which gained independence as part of the spill over effect of Indian Independence is progressively portraying the prediction of Winston Churchill as a country leading to ‘barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages".

The world atlas.com states: ‘The Sri Lanka flag was officially adopted on December 17,1978. Prior to 1815, the gold lion was originally the national flag of Ceylon; its four pipul leaves are Buddhist symbols and the sword is said to represent authority. On this modern version, the green represents Muslims, while the orange represents Hindus’.

This description epitomizes the violent nature of the Sri Lankan state mission since independence. The brutality of the state has progressed to suppress its own minority Tamil population by using modern weaponry of destruction sidelining the four pipul leaves that are Buddhist symbols of peace. If Sri Lanka flag had depicted a passive symbol of Buddha or the pipul leaves disregarding the sword carrying lion, the country could have produced political leaders with mature will to take forward the nation as an icon in the global village.

The religious characterisation of the communities in the flag is a curse that is germinating religious bigots and hatred in the majority Sinhala community that is dictating the violent political path for Sri Lanka since independence.

Any political resolution in Sri Lanka must not be cosmetic exercise but be a surgical operation starting with the redesigning of the nation flag reflecting peace, love, unity and diversity.