The Ribbon and the Song: Vande Mataram’s Day

The other music of 26 January

A single ribbon carries all three colours here, diving and rising past the Chakra like a signature — the kind of flourish that decorates every Republic Day greeting. The script says India; the ribbon says the rest.

If the anthem owns the flag-hoisting, the national song owns the morning. Vande Mataram, written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, was adopted on 24 January 1950 alongside Jana Gana Mana — and its bond with the flag is older still: the Calcutta flag of 1906 carried the words Vande Mataram across its central band, four decades before the tricolour flew free.