Host Colours: The Tricolour’s G20 Year

September 2023, New Delhi

A ribbon this restrained belongs on an invitation — one low line of colour, one practised curl, nothing else. In 2023 the country sent out exactly that invitation, twenty times over.

Under India’s G20 presidency, the leaders of the world’s largest economies gathered in New Delhi in September 2023 with the tricolour as host — the summit staged beneath the theme Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: One Earth, One Family, One Future. For that year the flag did the quiet diplomatic work ribbons do: it set the table, named the house, and welcomed everyone in.