Before Independence: The Flag That Went Abroad

Stuttgart, 1907

The quietest piece in the gallery: one slim ribbon, one small wheel, and the date that needs no decoration. Restraint suits 15 August — the day carries its own weight.

Forty years before that date meant freedom, an Indian flag had already flown abroad. In 1907 Madame Bhikaji Cama unfurled a flag of the independence movement at Stuttgart, in Germany — the first Indian flag raised on foreign soil, decades ahead of the tricolour that finally rose over a free country on 15 August 1947.