The importance of a national flag does not depend on its colour, its bands or its other parts. The flag as a whole, is important and other things–the colours etc., that it contains–are immaterial. The flag may be of a piece of white cloth of any other insignificant material but when it is accepted as a National Flag, it becomes the emblem of national self-respect. It becomes an expression of the sense of freedom a nation. It becomes its dearest object. For the last 27 years this tricolour flag has been uppermost in our thoughts and imagination. We have made numerous sacrifices for the freedom of India with this flag in our hands. As I have already stated, when a flag or any other thing is accepted by a nation as its ensign, it becomes the dearest object of the nation and assumes the most important and the highest place in the life and history of that nation. This, our Flag, has been the symbol of the hopes and dreams of our hundred million souls for the last 27 years. For the honour of this flag millions holding it dearer than their lives, suffered tremendously. Numberless people went to jails leaving their children starving. People had their heads and bones broken by the lathis of police and the military to keep it aloft. Unarmed youngmen and students of the country opened their chests before the bullets of the English military or police to protect the honour of his flag. For generations it has been our flag and the great feeling, emotion and enthusiasm we have in our hearts for this flag is beyond human description. We are eager to pay our tribute to this flag.
