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When the Indian flag was hoisted at midnight on August 15, 1947, it marked the birth of a free nation. But in the weeks leading up to it becoming a national symbol, the flag was a practical design challenge that had to be solved in just a few short weeks. At the centre of that effort was Surayya Tyabji, a 28-year-old artist from Hyderabad, and her husband Badruddin Tyabji, an ICS officer.
As India celebrates its 80th Independence Day today, Siasat.com takes a deep dive into the unknown history of our national symbol, uncovering the Deccani artistic legacy of Surayya behind the flag that flies above us all.
Born into the prominent Hydari family, niece/grandaughter of Hyderabad State’s former Prime Minister Sir Akbar Hydari, Surayya grew up around the rich art and craft traditions of the Deccan. In a region known for fine weaving, intricate patterns and careful dyeing techniques, she developed a practical understanding of fabrics and visual balance.
That background proved essential in July 1947, when finalising a national flag was required.
Pingali Venkayya had already designed the original Swaraj flag for the Congress Party in 1921, in which a charkha (spinning wheel) was at the centre. But as Independence Day approached, India urgently needed a neutral flag that did not belong to any single political party.
As Surayya and Badruddin’s daughter and founder of Dastkar, Laila Tyabji, wrote in an article for The Wire, Jawaharlal Nehru understood this urgency. At the time, Badruddin Tyabji was a senior Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer serving as a diplomat and civil servant in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat. She writes, ” Jawaharlal Nehru turned to my father and said, “Badr, you have an eye for this sort of thing, please do something about it.” My father set up a Flag Committee headed by Rajendra Prasad.”
Surayya and Badruddin, along with the committee, brainstormed for days, and ultimately decided to replace the charkha (spinning wheel) with Emperor Ashoka’s 24-spoked wheel (Dharma Chakra) from the Sarnath Pillar. According to Laila’s essay, the Tyabji couple loved the sculpture and ethos of that period, so it was a natural choice.
The Dharma Chakra kept the familiar structure of progress, but turned it into a shared symbol of truth, law and ancient heritage. However, the real challenge came when putting the stone pattern onto hand-woven Khadi cloth.
In her article, Laila captured how her parents reworked the design. She wrote, “So, my parents were tasked with re-doing the flag, and they took the Ashoka chakra and put it on the tricolour. Once it was done, it all seemed so natural and obvious. Originally, my mother had painted a black chakra, but Gandhiji objected, so it became navy blue.”
Designing a clear symbol on raw handloom cloth in pre-Pantone days was a major design hurdle that Surayya took head-on. Coarse fabric absorbs ink unevenly. So, when Mahatma Gandhi asked her to keep the chakra navy blue, there was a chance that it could bleed into the central white band. Or, if the saffron and green bands faded unevenly in the sun, the flag would fail functionally.
This is where Surayya’s training as a designer came in. She carefully drew the graphic version of the 24-spoked Ashok Chakra on paper, scaling it to fit cleanly within the central white band. She then set out to solve the practical challenge of ensuring the painted emblem translated accurately onto hand-spun Khadi cloth.
In the summer heat of late July 1947, she supervised the stitching of the first test flags at Edde Tailors & Drapers in Delhi’s Connaught Place, ensuring the cloth weight and proportions were accurate. As British historian Trevor Royle records in The Last Days of the Raj, the very first sample flag was fitted onto Prime Minister Nehru’s car on the night of August 14-15, 1947.
Every Independence Day, the story of the Hyderabadi Muslim woman who designed the Indian flag is circulated on mainstream and social media. However, according to Laila, this would have taken her parents aback, as most articles and Instagram posts frame the design as a solo effort. “They would have been amused that my father has been totally written out of the story,” she writes for The Wire.
Furthermore, what is even more curious is how the story behind the National Emblem is rarely mentioned in the media. It was around the same time as the flag that Surayya and Badruddin designed the famous Lion emblem. As former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit noted in her memoir Citizen Delhi: My Times, My Life, early ideas submitted by local art schools looked too much like traditional European heraldry. Surayya drew a clean graphic version of the Sarnath Lion Capital, which was taken directly to the Viceregal Lodge printing press to print the country’s first official letterheads.
Neither Badruddin nor Surayya ever claimed creative ownership of their design. However, a study conducted by Hyderabad historian Capt. Lingala Panduranga Reddy, President of Voice of Telangana, shed light on the true designers of the tricolour. Surayya is also named as the designer in a Flag Foundation study.
Their efforts behind the flag and the emblem are a timely reminder that our national symbols were not born out of political posturing, but out of deep love for Indian craft and heritage.
This post was last modified on August 15, 2026 4:39 pm