A Wheel in Motion: Radhakrishnan’s Reading

Why the wheel, and not the rest

This artist tips the Chakra onto its rim and sets it rolling down a painted wave — a small visual argument that the wheel was never meant to stand still. As it happens, that argument was made officially, on the day the flag was born.

When the Constituent Assembly adopted the tricolour on 22 July 1947, it was Dr S. Radhakrishnan who explained its symbols — and of the Chakra he said, in essence, that the wheel means motion: India should resist stagnation and move forward, changing peacefully but ceaselessly. The rolling wheel of this artwork is that speech, drawn.