Pingali Venkayya
Born 2 August 1876
Died 4 July 1963 (aged 86)
Nationality Indian
Occupation Geologist, Designer, Freedom Fighter.
Known for Design of Indian National Flag
Pingali Venkayya (Telugu: పింగళి వెంకయ్య) (2 August 1878 – 4 July 1963) was an Indian freedom fighter and the designer of the Indian national flag.
Pingali Venkaiah was born to Hanumantha Raidu and Venkat Ratnamma in Pedakallepalli, Divi Taluq, Krishna district, near Masulipatnam, the present day Machilipatnam of Andhra Pradesh, British India.
He belonged to a Telugu Brahmin family. He was brought up in Batlapenumarru village near Machilipatnam where he had his primary education. After finishing his primary education at Challapalli and school at the Hindu High School, Masulipatnam, he went to Colombo to complete his Senior Cambridge. Enthused by patriotic zeal, he enlisted himself for the Boer war at 19. While in Africa he met Gandhi, and their rapport lasted for more than half a century.
He was the eldest of 6 brothers and 2 sisters. His grandfather's name is also Venkayya. His younger brothers were Gopalakrishnaiah, Seetharamaiah, Balaramaiah, Achyutharamayya, Sivaramaiah and sisters were Mahalakshmi and Tripuramma.
He married Rukminamma, daughter of Turlapati Venkatachalam and Mangamma. They have 2 sons and 1 daughter. The eldest son Pingali Parasuramaiah worked Indian Express as a correspondent. He was also a geologist. He lived in Jandrapet, Chirala Prakasam district with his wife Damayanthi and daughters Annapurna,Nagalakshmi and Bhavani. Pingali only daughter Seethamahalakshmi, widow of Ghantasala Vugra Narasimham is the only direct sibling living now. She bore 3 sons and 3 daughters.
Pingali's son late Chalapathi Rao worked in the Indian army. His wife Janaki bore them 2 children. The eldest son Pingali Dasaratharam was the editor of Encounter, a political fortnightly from Vijayawada. He was murdered on 31-10-1985 in Satyanarayanapuram Vijayawada. His wife Suseela lives in Nandigama with her 2 sons and daughter. Chalapathirao's daughter Girija is living in Vijayawada with her husband Subramanyam.they have 1 daughter and one son.
Career
In Andhra Pradesh, this knowledge enabled him to spend most of his fortune experimenting with developing new crop cultivars and becoming an authority on diamond mining, leading to his popular nickname of "Diamond Venkayya". He served in the British Indian army during the Anglo-Boer wars in South Africa. It was there he came in contact with Mahatma Gandhi and was influenced by his ideology. He worked as a railway guard at Bangalore and Madras and subsequently joined the government service as the plague officer at Bellary before moving to Lahore, where he enrolled in the Anglo-Vedic college to study Urdu and Japanese.
During his five years stay in the north, he became active in politics. Pingali met many revolutionaries and helped plan to overthrow colonial rule. The 1906 Congress session with Dadabhai Naorojiallowed Pingali to emerge as an activist and a force behind the decision-making committee. Here he met the famous philanthropist, the Raja of Munagala, and from 1906–11, he spent his time in Munagala researching agriculture and crops. For his pioneering study on Cambodian cotton, he came to be called Patti Venkayya. Even the British were impressed by his contributions to agriculture and conferred on him honorary membership of the Royal Agricultural Society of Britain.
He returned to his roots at Masulipatnam and focused on developing the National School (at Masulipatnam), where he taught basic military training, horse riding, history and knowledge of agriculture, soil, crops and agriculture's relation to nature. In 1914, he turned his agricultural land into an estate and named it Swetchapuram.
National Flag
During the National conference of the Indian National Congress at Kakinada, Venkayya suggested that India should have a national flag. Gandhi liked this proposal. He suggested that Venkayya come up with a design. During the National conference at Vijayawada, Venkayya proposed a tricolour with an Ashoka Chakra at the middle. Gandhi liked the result, and the design was later adopted as the National Flag of India. After researching 30 flags, Pingali design a flag that became the forerunner of the Indian national flag. The flags antecedents can be traced back to the Vande Mataram movement.
The years 1921–31 constitute a heroic chapter in both Pingali Venkayya's life and in the history of the Andhra freedom struggle. The AICC met at a two day session at Bezwada (31 March-1 April 1921). At this session Pingali approached Gandhi with the flag. Pingali's flag was made of red and green, representing the country's two major communities. The Indian flag was not officially accepted by the All India Congress Committee. However, Gandhi's approval made it popular and it was hoisted at all Congress sessions. Hansraj of Jallandar suggested the representation of the charkha, symbolising progress and the common man. Gandhi insisted on a white strip to represent India's remaining minority communities.
A consensus was not reached until 1931. The colour choices produced controversy as communal tension broke over its interpretation. The final resolution passed when the AICC met at Karachi in 1931. The flag was interpreted as saffron for courage, white for truth and peace, and green for faith and prosperity. The dharma chakhra which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath at the capital of Emperor Ashoka was adopted in place of spindle and string as the emblem on the national flag.
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan proposed that saffron denote renunciation or disinterestedness of political leaders towards material gains in life, that white depict enlightenment, lighting the path of truth to guide our conduct and that green symbolise our relation to the soil, to the plant life here on which all other life depends. The Ashoka wheel in the centre of the white strip represented the law of dharma.
Speaking philosophically, he remarked that the national flag ought to control the principles of all those who worked under it. The wheel denoted motion and India should no more resist change as there was death produced only stagnation.
Death
Pingali Venkayya passed away on 4 July 1963 in Vijayawada. His only daughther Ghantasala Sita Mahalakshmi (about 90 years old [in 2012])) lives in the town of Macherla, in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh along with her second son G.V.N. Narasimham, a retired Principal of a Government College. Her third son Ghantasaala Gopi Krishna lives in A. S. Rao Nagar suburb of Hyderabad.
Sri.Pingali Venkaiah was recommended for the highest civilian award in India — Bharat Ratna on 18 November 2012 by Government of Andhra Pradesh.
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