The way he describes colours, TM Krishna might be an artist who dabbled with paints and portraits and found inspiration from nature. You have to remind yourself that he is a Carnatic musician whose love for language and research comes out in books every few years. He has also earned a reputation for his outspokenness about all that he found unjust, bringing him bouquets and brickbats and the label of a rebel he hates to own.
But it is with the colours of the Indian flag that Krishna began his gripping lecture at the Kerala Legislature International Book Festival (KLIBF) on January 7. In an hour, he gave a beautiful gist of the five national symbols of India, the subject of his upcoming book, We the People of India. Crisply, articulately, Krishna touched on brief histories of the flag, the emblem, the motto, the anthem and song, and the preamble, linking them to present-day India with the ease of a well-read writer.
Unsurprisingly, Krishna's speech was peppered with jolting descriptions. Picking the saffron colour of the Indian flag, he explained how it was first introduced as 'bhagwa', a term he pinned to Buddhist tradition, before concluding: "So, the saffron is actually associated with Buddhism and not with Hinduism."
Another bold remark was made when Krishna touched on the preamble -- towards the end of his speech, linking the word dignity to privacy and calling out the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). "It has destroyed the dignity of every individual arrested in those cases. We know the story of Stan Swamy (a Jesuit priest who died in prison as an undertrial prisoner), and we know what is happening with Umar Khalid (student activist held as a political prisoner without trial for five years)."
He also gently reminded one to stop calling the flag a tri-colour, forgetting the very important blue chakra in the middle. Krishna's quest to find the origins of the symbols comes from the simple curiosity of a child. Why was the chakra blue, for instance, and why did BR Ambedkar, the father of the Constitution, always wear blue suits? This is the colour that has passed down generations and become the symbol of Dalit movements.
Krishna found his answer -- an informed guess -- in one of Ambedkar's essays, in which Ambedkar himself quoted a verse associating caste with colour. "And if you look, even scholars who have written about colour and class across the globe during the medieval period associated darker blue and black with those who are kept lower in the social hierarchy.”
“In fact, the colour associated with the Shudras is dark blue or darker shades of black," Krishna said.
He spoke elaborately about Emperor Ashoka and his embracing of Buddhism when he described the emblem and its four lions. Interestingly, he brought out the Buddhist connection again in interpreting those lions as not attacking but symbolising compassionate power, benevolent grace and dignified leadership – something that he finds missing in the newly erected lions of the new Parliament in 2022.
"We erected a set of lions that seem to be attacking everybody. They are not compassionate. Their teeth seem to be ready to pounce on somebody."
It is difficult not to find the pun in that line. Krishna did not say it, but erect could easily be misheard as elect, and there is really no need to worry about mere sculptures, however terrifying they look. It became clearer as he said, "Maybe these lions are portraying what we want to stand for today. An oppressive power. An arrogant country."
The new Parliament's lions, he said, though they have the structure and shape of the emblem of India, are really not the emblem of India. "Because these lions are not the lions that we embraced in 1947-48."
He then pondered over the reasons for India's unusual motto (in the way it is little connected to the land's history or struggle) -- Satyameva Jayate, before launching into the topic of the national anthem, which is what, as a musician, had originally drawn his interest in the symbols.
With all the debate around the national song- Vande Mataram - Krishna began with Rabindranath Tagore's beautiful first verse. The irony, he said, is that with all the fighting that is going on today, no one has sought the original tune that the song was composed in by Tagore, and released by the government of India. No one knows who composed the newer, familiar tune that we sing today.
Krishna also cleared the air about the national anthem - Jana Gana Mana -- being about King George V of Britain. He argued that Tagore was so irritated by a request to write a song for the arrival of King George that he wrote one that sounded like a protest and appeared to have been rejected. But the same song was later passed on to the National Congress as a celebratory one.
Krishna’s book, We the People of India: Decoding a Nation’s Symbols, is expected to be released later this month.