Khadi in the Wind: The Flag Against the Sky

The cloth that carries the colours

A stiff wind, a deep monsoon sky, and the Tiranga answering both — this is the flag as cloth, not diagram. Photographs like this one catch what specification sheets cannot: the weight of the fabric, the snap of the fly end, the way saffron and green burn brighter against a bank of cloud.

That cloth has a discipline of its own. The official flag has for decades been hand-spun khadi, the homespun fabric Mahatma Gandhi turned into a symbol of self-reliance, and its manufacture answers to the Bureau of Indian Standards. BIS IS 1 lays down nine standard sizes for it — from Size 1 at 6.3 × 4.2 metres down to Size 9 at just 150 × 100 millimetres.