14/08/2026
Why this post today on the eve of the Independence Day?
The Tiranga is one of the few things in Indian life governed by a written standard almost nobody has read.
Three documents, three jobs. The Flag Code of India 2002 tells you what is proper. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act 1971 tells you what is punishable. IS 1:1968 tells you what is authentic.
In December 2021 the Code opened the flag to machine-made polyester. Khadi weavers objected — the chakra and the cloth came out of the same freedom struggle, and only one of them was protected. That argument is still live.
The specification is exacting. Cloth at 205 g/m², not 205 g per square foot as half the internet repeats. Ratio 3:2. Twenty-four spokes. Nine sizes, tolerance ±1.5 per cent.
Six stages, most of them by hand: spinning, weaving, dyeing, chakra printing, stitching, toggling. The chakra must register on both faces, palm to palm. One faulty flag can send an entire lot back.
Hoisted briskly, lowered slowly. Saffron uppermost on a wall, at the far end of a balcony staff. And since July 2022, a flag at your house may fly day and night — a rule most people still don't know changed.
No festoon. No drapery. No lettering. Not below the waist, not over a bonnet, not touching the ground. Most of these were common practice until the 2003 and 2005 amendments made them offences.
The rule broken most is the quiet one. A flag past use is folded and retired in private — buried in a wooden box, or burnt at a clean site. Never left to weather on the pole. Never in a bin on the 16th.
Respect is a procedure, not a feeling.
Flag hoisting at Shri Bhuvaneshvari Homestay, Jambrung, on 15 August. Come and hoist it with us — and stay for chai. Message me for the time if you're anywhere near Karjat.
