The making of India's tricolour

DH journalist Divyashri Mudakavi follows the journey of how the national flag is woven and assembled across two centres in Karnataka

I was standing at the entrance of a decrepit hall. Sunlight filtered in through the windows. The Khadi Kendra at Tulasigeri, a village 13 km from Bagalkot, was buzzing with activity. It is the centre where the cloth used to make the national flag is woven. Just two weeks ahead of Republic Day, I was eager to see our Tiranga take birth.

On my 125 km-drive from Hubballi to Tulasigeri, I let my imagination run wild. I had expected the building to be a magnificent one reflecting the colours of our flag and surrounded by a garden. After all, it is an important spot for Indians. However, I was disappointed.

The Kendra is on the Belagavi main road but it can go easily unnoticed. There is nothing to indicate the importance of the building. The name board has nearly faded, the rooms with uneven tiles and worn out roof have not seen a fresh coat of paint for years and cobwebs have not spared even a single corner of the building. There are a number of rooms separated by an open space in between and each one is dedicated to a particular process of making bunting for flags.

The building looked unwelcoming at the outset but the rhythmic rattling of the looms drew me in.

As I waited for Rangappa Batakurki, the manager, to accompany me, my eyes fell on Bhimavva. Her hands were pulling a chord and at the same time her legs were working its treadles. A shuttle moved from left to right, interlocking the horizontal and vertical threads. Her eyes focussed on each thread.

On the loom

Looking at how intrigued I was, Bhimavva offered me a chance to try my hands at it and I quickly replaced her on the loom. While I managed to pass a handful of threads into the warp in around 15 minutes, Tangavva working beside me had woven half a metre of cloth in the same time. I realised how strenuous the process was when my shoulders and legs began to tire shortly after I had started.

Bhimavva laughed as I got up and she returned to her seat. Weaving is not a challenge for them, she told me. It is the precision of the thread count that matters. “Every inch of this cloth must have exactly 42 warps (ends) and 40 wefts (picks). If not, it is rejected,” she said.

Tulasigeri is one of the few remaining centres across the state where the khadi cloth used to make the national flags are woven. The hand-spun yarn and fabric woven by 60 to 70 workers, all of whom are women, are sent to the Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha (Federation) at Bengeri in Hubballi where the flags are finally handcrafted. I was due for a visit there following my day at the Khadi Kendra.

Though there are many institutions and individuals across the country who make the national flag, the Sangha at Bengeri is the only one in the country authorised by the Khadi & Village Industries Commission (KVIC) to produce BIS-hallmarked flags of all sizes. They make flags adhering to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) norms. It specifies the warp, weft (threads per unit) and weight of the flag bunting and the duck. The booklet also mentions the dimensions of the flag of various sizes, wooden toggle and hemp cordage, the flag’s design and construction, colours, yarns to be used, methods of testing, sewing and other specifications.

On the manager’s arrival, we moved into a section where the women were spinning the charkha while seated on the floor.

Behind the wheel

A blend of locally grown Jayadhar and other varieties of cotton like the Banni are first carded in nearby villages and spun into loose yarns. At the centre, it is thinned out on a charkha or the spinning wheel.

The women used the modern-day amber charkha which was again unlike my imagination. I had assumed they would be working on ‘peti’ charkhas, which was famously used by Gandhiji. As I sat beside them observing the technique of spinning, I saw the women twisting two strands of the yarn at an angle to form a thinner and stronger yarn. “This is the two twist yarn used for the flag bunting. It is designed to be strong. For the flag duck (beige cloth that holds the flag to the pole), we combine three strands of yarn so that it is sturdy enough to hold the flag to the pole,” the manager explained to me.

Kamalavva, in her 50s, told me that she has been working at the Kendra since she lost the strength in her legs to polio, when she was still a child. Though she has never had the chance to visit Delhi, she is happy that the flag she helped make is fluttering atop the Red Fort, and several important buildings across the country.

Kamalavva spins around 15 to 16 small hanks of the yarn per day which, on an average, fetches her around Rs 2,000 per month. This made me wonder if this meagre amount for a month of hard work is fair enough. My thought process was cut short by the manager.

He explained: Once the twisted yarns are ready, they are treated in a mixture of starch, all-purpose flour (maida), natural resin and some fenugreek seeds. This gives it the right balance of stiffness and softness to endure the weaving process. This treated yarn is then wound into bobbins.

He then took me to the warping room where multiple strands of yarn from a number of bobbins were suspended on a vertical wooden frame. They are then rolled onto a beam. He then fed the beams to the loom where deft hands began interlocking the warps and wefts at a right angle using the zapping shuttle. Slowly, a crisp flag bunting (fabric) began emerging out of the loom.

Precise thread count

Once ready, the manager collected the fabric to check if it met the prescribed standards. He used a lens to check the thread count and weighed the fabric. “One square metre of flag bunting must weigh exactly 220 gm. While the flag bunting must be 96 cm in width, the flag duck is 75 cm,” he told me, explaining the BIS standards.

I was still confused about the finer differences between khadi and handloom. A worker accompanying the manager pitched in, “Akka, handloom is a fabric where machine-spun yarns are woven by hand whereas khadi fabric is made from completely handspun yarn which is handwoven.”

Maybe it is the pride of handcrafting cloth for the national flag that motivates these women to continue working here despite negligible pay, I sensed.

The Kendra’s 20 charkhas and over 20 looms churned out around 20,000 metres of flag bunting last year. But most importantly, the centre has helped support several lives over the years and this was reflective in the smiles that the women wore.

After seeing the fabric being woven in Tulasigeri and the nearby villages of Seemikeri and Jalihala, I could not wait to see the plain fabric taking the form of a flag at Bengeri.

The 17-acre campus of the Karnataka Khadi Gramodyoga Samyukta Sangha (Federation) at Bengeri has an old-world charm with greenery all around. Busts of veteran freedom fighter V T Magadi and his wife, former minister, Leelavathi Magadi, grabbed my attention at the entrance.

Where it comes together

On enquiring, I was told that the Sangha was established on November 1, 1957 to help and guide khadi institutions during the decentralisation of khadi work in Karnataka. V T Magadi became its first chairman while Shriranga Kamat its vice-chairman. Many other Gandhians joined hands by contributing Rs 10,500 to set up the Federation.

Today, the Sangha has a Khadi Vastragar (a store selling khadi products), honey unit, readymade garment section, textile chemistry college, and a naturopathy centre among others. The BIS-authorised national flag production centre established in 2004 stands as its crown.

Unlike Tulasigeri, the Bengeri centre had the tricolour in every corner. Here, the centre’s manager, Annapoorna Doddmani, showed me around. She has hosted a number of important politicians, celebrities and senior journalists over the last two decades.

The flag production centre employs around 20 women and one man. When I asked why, the women explained in unison that the process of flag-making “demands patience and an eye for detail”. “We do not earn much here but we are proud to be part of the nation’s legacy,” some said.

Once the Bengeri unit receives the flag bunting, the cloth is dyed into saffron, green and white using specific dyes. Annapoorna did not reveal more about the colours, a ‘trade secret’. “We are particular about the shade of the tricolours and even a slight difference is not acceptable,” said Annapoorna pointing to a pile of cloth that had been kept aside due to a slight variation in the shades.

To my eyes, many of those fabrics looked like they were the right shade of saffron and green, but they had failed to match the BIS-recommended card shade.

Many sizes

Annapoorna then showed how the dyed bunting is cut according to the specified sizes. They were detailed in a chart hanging behind her. The largest flags that the Sangha manufactures is 6,300x4,200 mm and is flown atop the Nargund Fort in Gadag district of Karnataka, Shinhagad Fort near Pune and Gwalior Fort in Madhya Pradesh. The smallest is 150x100 mm. They are used as table flags.

However, the flags most in demand are 900x600 mm and 1,350x900 mm which are flown at government offices and educational institutions. There are also 3,600x2,400 mm flags which are seen atop the Delhi Red Fort, 2,700x1,800 mm flags hoisted at Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru and 1,800x1,200 mm flags preferred by the defence, Annapoorna elaborates.

Once the tricolour strips are cut, two women collect the white strips on which the Ashoka chakra is printed. While one of them secures the strip on a wooden frame, another one pours navy blue dye on to the frame to screen print the emblem on one side.

Once they print the emblem on both sides, they hang it out in the sun. Then, a woman feeds these sun-dried fabric strips into a curing machine where the colour settles into the fabric under 140° C heat.

The strips are then ready for sewing. At this stage, the women ensure uniformity in the width of the cloth and the stitches too.

The sewing machines in the unit are old and in dire need of repairs. But the women do not complain and continue their work as they consider it a service to the nation.

Finishing touches

Attaching the flag duck requires equal skill.

At the corner of the room, I noticed 64-year-old Shamshad sorting the hemp cordage lying all around her. A much younger Anita was fixing the wooden toggles to the duck and hand-stitching them using a sturdy cotton thread. I felt I could help them out with my limited skills. I joined them and to my satisfaction, my embroidery skills came in handy.

From here, I moved to the ironing section where the flags were steam ironed, folded, packed and sent to the sale section.

While the women at the centre feel that better pay can make them happier given the rising cost of living, the Sangha has challenges of its own. The demand for khadi flags came down after the Flag Code was amended, allowing the use of polyester and other handloom flags.

“Between January and September last year, we sold flags worth Rs 1.25 crore but we have only made Rs 25 lakh between Independence Day 2024, and Republic Day 2025,” shared the Sangha’s current secretary Shivanand Mathpathi.

He said khadi, which became a symbol of the country during the freedom struggle, deserves better recognition and making khadi flags mandatory again will help rejuvenate the flag-making industry.