No Standard but One: The President’s Flag

Rashtrapati Bhavan’s mast

Picture 69 is the flag with nothing added — flat, exact, the reference rendering itself — and it opens the extension on the most institutional question that plain rectangle ever answers.

There is no presidential flag. Since 1971 the President of India has flown the national tricolour itself — over Rashtrapati Bhavan, on the presidential car among the listed dignitaries, at every ceremony of the office. The head of state and the citizen at home raise the same three bands; rank, in India’s flag protocol, adds nothing to the cloth.