Seven Stars and a Crescent: The 1917 Flag

Annie Besant and Tilak’s banner

Picture 70 is a photograph of the Red Fort with the tricolour above it — the fort every flag of the freedom years dreamed of crowning. One of those dreamers, from 1917, gets its portrait here.

In 1917 the Home Rule movement of Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak raised its own flag: five red and four green horizontal stripes, the seven stars of the Saptarishi across them, a crescent and star at the fly — and, in the canton, the Union Jack, for the movement sought self-rule within the empire, not yet outside it. The tricolour’s family tree keeps this branch honestly: a flag of demands, before the flag of freedom.