A Missing Chakra
- India’s national emblem, with the four lions and the Ashoka Chakra at the bottom is erroneous, say some
- The original Ashoka Pillar at Sarnath has the Chakra on top, symbolising spirituality over strength (the lions)
- The chakra on our flag was meant to be ‘Mahadharma chakra’, with 32 spokes, not 24 as we have now
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In the Mookherjee household on Calcutta’s plush Ekdalia Road, it has been a hush-hush after-dinner topic for four generations now. “My grandfather often narrated how shocked he was that Nehru allowed a distorted symbol to pass off as the national emblem of our country,” Pradipta Mukhopadhyay tells Outlook. Mukhopadhyay, the grandson of Radha Kumud Mookherjee, historian, scholar and Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament during Jawaharlal Nehru’s premiership, is in possession of documents and letters exchanged between his grandfather and India’s first prime...
