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The Man Who is Forgotten!

This is the story of a man who at the age of 19 joined the British Indian Army. He was deployed in South Africa during the Second Boer war (1899-1902). This is where his story of great determination begins, as it happens in the battlefield the soldiers had to salute the British National flag the Union Jack. The idea of showing devotion towards the national flag stuck with him and he dreamed of designing a national flag for India.

Pingali Venkayya was born on 2nd August 1876 in Bhatlapenumarru village of Andhra Pradesh. A man with many distinct virtues, Pingali completed his graduation from Cambridge. An agriculturalist, and also an educationist, he helped setting up many schools in his village of Machilipatnam.

As he rejected the concept of displaying the British flag during Congress meetings, Venkayya was inspired to create a flag for the Indian National Congress while attending the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session in 1906 in Calcutta, which was led by Dadabhai Naoroji. He released a book about flags in 1916. A National Flag for India was the title of the booklet. There were 24 different flag designs in it. The first flag, known as the Swaraj flag, had two red and green bands that stood for the country's two largest religious groups, Hindus and Muslims. A charkha, which stood for Swaraj, was also present on the flag. Venkayya added a white band on Mahatma Gandhi's recommendation. White stood for world peace.

"Pingali Venkaiah who is working in Andhra National College Machilipatnam, has published a book, describing the flags of the countries and has designed many models for our own National Flag. I appreciate his hard struggle during the sessions of Indian National Congress for the approval of Indian National Flag,” Mahatma Gandhi had written in Young India.

However, though being one of the key architects who shaped modern India, he died in rather abject poverty. Recently some prestige was inferred upon his legacy by the Central government by issuing a post stamp but till this day he is largely forgotten by the post-independence subsequent generation of masses.