Tuesday, February 1 2005 14:28 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Hoisting a national flag is the fundamental right of every Indian but how appropriate is it to use the 'tiranga' and its colours on all sorts of things, be it painting the face, garments or commercial merchandise?

A year after the Supreme Court allowed every Indian to fly the national flag, a new book on the tricolour discusses issues on the way it should be used and what defines respect and patriotic spirit while chronicling pictorial history of the flag.

"The flag is not a design element and should not be used as one," says Amba Sanyal, a crafts expert and writer.

"In this age of globalisation, to destroy your symbols will make it all the more difficult to retain yourself in this onslaught of homogenisation," says Sanyal, in the new coffee table book "Tiranga - a celebration of Indian flag". "The flag and map are symbols that appear to be up for grabs. I am therefore in conflict. While I want everyone to have the right to the flag but to have it produced ad nauseam and commercialised is not something that I would go with," says Geeti Sen, Art Historian and Critic.

"It is like a plastic shopping bag that came into my household the other day that had the Indian flag printed on both sides. It amused me at first and then made me very angry," says Sen, in the book.

Kirpal Singh, an artist says "I am not sure if the idea of painting your face in flag colours is a way to honour your country. Suppose you have your face painted like that and someone comes and slaps you. What does this mean? You have brought dishonour to the whole country?"

However, Rajeev Sethi, a designer and scenographer, asks, "What is wrong with flags making appearances everywhere including on T-shirts, trucks and building walls? It is like images of Gods appearing everywhere. What is sacrosanct about it?"

"Our country has lived with layers of iconography and making iconographic statements has been part of our culture, involving both use and abuse of icons," he says.

"New icons may appear while old ones may get forgotten or return to dust. For me the change of icons is not a concern but the level of faith. The dynamics of creative use of icons, whether old or new, is the most interesting part of it all," says Sethi.

"The National Flag should be displayed selectively and rarely so that it gets the respect it deserves. It has its own appropriate place. You cannot want it to be hoisted at an Idgah maidan or for that matter the Kashi Vishwanath temple or any such place. It has been a flag of freedom and our freedom struggle and it should not be turned into a flag of coercion or annexation," says poet Ashok Vajpayee.

"The National flag is an emblem of our fight for freedom and an assertion of our sovereignty. It is our common property not a status symbol for VIPs. We have every right to fly it where and when we like," says noted columnist Khushwant Singh.

The coffee table book tries to capture the many moods of Indians and their association with the saffron-white-green - from children playing with the flag to the roadside vendors selling small paper flags and the flag painted on the back of trucks.

"A flag by itself cannot hold a big nation like ours enthralled with national pride. But it can help inculcate a sense of unity and friendship amongst its young citizens," says filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan.

The battle on the right to fly the flag has ended but there continues to be another battle ahead - to translate the ideals represented by the flag into reality and make ours a proud and prosperous nation, says Navin Jindal, the man who fought a long court case to win the right to fly the Indian triolour.

Jindal along with his wife Shallu, have brought out this book, which has more than 100 photographs depicting the work of 70 of India's top photographers on the theme of the flag.

The book has frames shot by the likes of Raghu Rai, Dayanita Singh, Avinash Pasricha and Swapan Parekh.

"Consciously and unconsciously, Indians are always referring to the flag... we wanted to show that the flag is part of so many things in India," says Shallu, who also heads the Flag Foundation of India.

About the Book: Tiranga - A celebration of the Indian Flag Edited by: Vijay S Jodha & Sameer S Jodha Published by: Neovision Publishers Pvt Ltd