National Symbols of India

National Flag - Tiranga or Tri-color The National Flag is a horizontal tricolour of deep saffron (kesaria) at the top, white in the middle and dark green at the bottom in equal proportion. The ratio of width of the flag to its length is two to three. In the centre of the white band is a navy-blue wheel which represents the chakra. Its design is that of the wheel which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka. Its diameter approximates to the width of the white band and it has 24 spokes. The design of the National Flag was adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India on 22 July 1947.

The significance of the colours and the chakra in the National Flag was amply described by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in the Constituent Assembly which unanimously adopted the National Flag.Dr. S. Radhakrishnan explained—“Bhagwa or the saffron colour denotes renunciation of disinterestedness. Our leaders must be indifferent to material gains and dedicate themselves to theirwork. The white in the centre is light, the path of truth to guide our conduct. The green shows our relation to soil, our relation to the plant life here on which all other life depends. The Ashoka Wheel in the center of the white is the wheel of the law of dharma. Truth or satya, dharma or virtue ought to be the controlling principles of those who work under this flag. Again, the wheel denotes motion. There is death in stagnation. There is life in movement. India should no more resist change, it must move and go forward. The wheel represents the dynamism of a peaceful change.

National Emblem - Ashok Stambh The state emblem is an adaptation from the Sarnath Lion Capital of Ashoka. In the original, there are four lions, standing back to back, mounted on an abacus with a frieze carrying sculptures in high relief of an elephant, a galloping horse, a bull and a lion separated by intervening wheels over a bell-shaped lotus. Carved out of a single block of polished sandstone, the Capital is crowned by the Wheel of the Law (Dharma Chakra).

In the state emblem, adopted by the Government of India on 26 January 1950, only three lions are visible, the fourth being hidden from view. The wheel appears in relief in the centre of the abacus with a bull on right and a horse on left and the outlines of other wheels on extreme right and left. The bell-shaped lotus has been omitted. The words Satyameva Jayate from Mundaka Upanishad, meaning 'Truth Alone Triumphs', are inscribed below the abacus in Devanagari script.

National Flower - Lotus Lotus is the National Flower of India. It is a sacred flower and occupies a unique position in the art and mythology of ancient India and has been an auspicious symbol of Indian culture since time immemorial.

National River - Ganges The Ganga or Ganges is the longest river of India flowing over 2,510 kms of mountains, valleys and plains. It originates in the snowfields of the Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas as the Bhagirathi River. It is later joined by other rivers such as the Alaknanda, Yamuna, Son, Gumti, Kosi and Ghagra. The Ganga river basin (External website that opens in a new window) is one of the most fertile and densely populated areas of the world and covers an area of 1,000,000 sq. kms. There are two dams on the river - one at Haridwar and the other at Farakka. The Ganges River Dolphin is an endangered animal that specifically habitats this river.
The Ganga is revered by Hindus as the most sacred river on earth. Key religious ceremonies are held on the banks of the river at cities such as Varanasi, Haridwar and Allahabad. The Ganga widens out into the Ganges Delta in the Sunderbans swamp of Bangladesh, before it ends its journey by emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

National Tree - Banayan tree Indian fig tree, Banayan Tree , whose branches root themselves like new trees over a large area. The roots then give rise to more trunks and branches. Because of this characteristic and its longevity, this tree is considered immortal and is an integral part of the myths and legends of India. Even today, the banyan tree is the focal point of village life and the village council meets under the shade of this tree.

Others

• National Fruit - Mango


• National Animal - Bengal Tiger


• National Bird - Indian Peacock


• National Game - Hockey


• National Acquatic Animal - River Dolphin

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Celebrating India's linguistic diversity 10 Aug 2008, 0130 hrs IST, Shashi Tharoor

Came across this beautiful post written by Shashi Tharoor in the Times of India to commemorate India's 61st Independence Day . The post so clearly brings out India's linguistic diversity and extolls us to celebrate this diversity and remain unified.

Twelve years ago, when India celebrated the 49th anniversary of our independence from British rule, H D Deve Gowda, then the prime minister, stood at the ramparts of New Delhi's 16th century Red Fort and delivered the traditional Independence Day address to the nation in Hindi, the language which we have all learned to refer to (though the term has no constitutional basis) as India's 'national language'.

Eight other prime ministers had done exactly the same thing 48 times before him, but what was unusual this time was that Deve Gowda, a southerner from the state of Karnataka, spoke to the country in a language of which he scarcely knew a word. Tradition and politics required a speech in Hindi, so he gave one - the words having been written out for him in his native Kannada script, in which they, of course, made no sense.

Such an episode is almost inconceivable elsewhere, but it represents the best of the oddities that help make India India. Only in India could a country be ruled by a man who does not understand its 'national language'. Only in India, for that matter, is there a 'national language' that half the population does not understand. And only in India could this particular solution be found to enable the prime minister to address his people.

Back in the 1980s, one of Indian cinema's finest playback singers, the Keralite K J Yesudas, sang his way to the top of the Hindi music charts with lyrics in that language written in the Malayalam script for him, but to see the same practice elevated to the prime ministerial address on Independence Day was a startling affirmation of Indian pluralism.

I have often argued that we are all minorities in India. But language is one of the most interesting affirmations of our diversity. Though i am no great linguist myself, i was able to joke to an American friend once that i was a typically Indian child: I spoke Malayalam to my mother, English to my father, Hindi to our driver, Bengali to our domestic help and Sanskrit to God. One look at our rupee notes, with their denominations spelled out in 18 languages (and nearly as many scripts) is enough to make the point. The Constitution of India recognises 23 languages today, but in fact there are 35 Indian languages that are each spoken by more than a million people - and these are languages with their own scripts, grammatical structures and cultural assumptions, not just dialects (and if we're to count dialects, there are more than 22,000).

No language enjoys majority status in India, though Hindi is coming perilously close. Thanks in part to the popularity of Bollywood, Hindi is understood, if not always well spoken, by nearly half our population, but it cannot truly be considered the language of the majority. Indeed, its locutions, gender rules and script are unfamiliar to most Indians in the south or northeast. And if the proliferation of Hindi TV channels has made the spoken language more accessible to many non-native speakers, the fact that other languages too have captured their share of the TV audience means that our linguistic diversity is not going to disappear.

One of my favourite silly jokes as a small child was about a native of Madras (not yet rebaptised Chennai) who finds himself lost in the nation's capital and approaches a Sikh policeman with the helpless query, “Tamil teriyima?" Whereupon the cop retorts, "Punjabi tera baap!" Part of the good-natured joy of the juvenile joke was that the bilingual pun was one that most Indians - but only Indians - could catch instantly.

The popularity in the 1990s of those endless 'Ajit jokes', which relied on linguistic humour of the most inventively bilingual kind, could never find an equivalent in the monolingual cultures of America or the white members of the British Commonwealth. Indeed, a more contemporary joke doing the rounds at the UN goes like this: "What do you call someone who speaks two languages?" Answer: "Bilingual." "And someone who speaks several languages?" Answer: "Multilingual." And someone who speaks only one language?" Answer: "American."

But my larger and more serious point, as we look forward to our 61st Independence Day, is that Indian nationalism is a rare animal indeed. The French speak French, the Germans speak German, the Americans speak English (though Spanish is making inroads, especially in the south-west and south-east of the US) - but Indians speak Punjabi, or Gujarati, or Malayalam, and it does not make us any less Indian.

The idea of India is not based on language (since we have at least 18 or 35, depending on whether you follow the Constitution or the ethnolinguists). It is no accident that Jawaharlal Nehru's classic volume of Indian nationalism, The Discovery of India, was written in English - and it is fair to say that Nehru discovered India in English. Indeed, when two Indians meet abroad, or two educated urban Indians meet in India, unless they have prior reason to believe they have an Indian language in common, the first language they speak to each other is English. It is in English that they establish each other's linguistic identity, and then they switch comfortably to another language, or a hybrid, depending on the link they have established.

In my books and columns i have sung a great deal about the virtues of pluralism. It is a reality that pluralism emerges from the very nature of our country; it is a choice made inevitable by India's geography, reaffirmed by its history and reflected in its ethnography. Let us celebrate our Independence on August 15 in a multitude of languages, so long as we can say in all of them how proud we are to be Indian.

Meaning of Life!

What is Life - is it a experience of a given moment or is it the whole journey from birth to death , is it a emotion or a image of a special event , is it only a attachment to one's body or is it the very action that comes out from the body. This and many such questions always come to my mind as I try to find meaning for this word. No doubt it is God's most treasured creation and especially so if you think of a human life form.

In my current state of understanding ''Life has a meaning only if it can offer a value for others else the journey is meaningless ".

Collected below are the view points of some of the great souls , personalities and leaders on what they view as 'Life'

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
- Kalidasa

Where there is love there is life - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. Buddha

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years - Abraham Lincoln

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile - Albert Einstein

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. - Albert Einstein

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living -Anais Nin

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge - Unknown

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life - Eleanor Roosevelt

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built - Eleanor Roosevelt

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet - Emily Dickinson

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired - Erik Erikson

Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile - Franklin Jones

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? -George Eliot

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars - Henry Van Dyke

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. ~Robert Byrne

The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. ~Chinese Proverb

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. ~Elwyn Brooks White


Life is simple, its just not easy. ~Unknown


A life without cause is a life without effect. ~Barbarella

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge ~ Bertand Russell

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? ~ Charles Schulz

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. ~ Dorothy Thompson

7 Effective Habits Stephen Covey

Stephen Covey is best known , as the author of the best selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People . I had read this book long time back and as per me the concept proposed in his book is universal and will never be redundant.

Covey's proposed the concept based on the understanding that man is a function of his habit and any change in life needs a change in habit.The idiom that habits die hard is so true -its extremely hard to break a habit as it develops from childhood and remain with you as you grow and sometime dies only with the person. Someone once told me the word HABIT itself indicates how difficult it is to give it up - so if you remove the H - A BIT remains , if you remove the A - BIT remains and if you then remove the B - IT still remains.

Covey therefore proposed that one should break from an existing habit and pick up a new one if one desires a change in his life (else same action will always produce the same reaction). He has then gone ahead ,to help identify 7 habits which are common among the more successful and effective people viz. some well known leaders and personalities. Below are summary of this 7 habits

The First Three Habits surround moving from dependence to independence (self mastery)

• Habit 1: Be Proactive
• Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
• Habit 3: Put First Things First

The Next Three are to do with Interdependence

• Habit 4: Think Win/Win
• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood
• Habit 6: Synergize

The Last habit relates to self-rejuvenation;

• Habit 7: Sharpening the Saw

Also complied below are some of his quotes which are very interesting

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.