The story behind the making of the first tricolour and the national emblem

As opposition came to the fore with the assumption that Congress' tricolour flag with Gandhiji's charkha in the middle would be the national flag, Ashoka chakra was put in place of the charkha

It was 1947 and the frenzy of Partition. My parents’ home was attacked and ransacked and my father survived an attempt to kill him. In those chaotic, strange times, it was a crazed young Sikh who aimed pointblank at his chest; a Hindu who twisted away the gun and saved him.

The year 1947 was also the year I was born. My father was a civil servant in the Constituent Assembly and my mother busy in the refugee camps set up at Red Fort. Homeless, camping with friends, it came as a shock that some of my father’s colleagues refused even