 Challenges in the history of colours: The case of saffronSadan Jha
The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2014, vol. 51, issue 2, 199-229 Abstract: This article delineates the emergence of saffron as a colour of national importance in the late 1920s, when Nehru recognised it as an ‘old colour’, and Suniti Kumar Chatterji claimed that it was symbolic of ‘Indian life’, thus elevating it from its humble position as a kacha colour. The need to assess such claims has prompted a longue durée approach to unravel the complexities of writing a history of colours in the Indian milieu. An attempt has been made to analyse the role played by history in defining saffron and equating it with Hinduism—marginalising the colour red in the process. This study argues that through a selective interpretation of the past, regional and local usages and meanings of geru, kesari or kusumba came to mean a well defined shade of saffron in the second half of the 1920s and were eventually equated with the nation’s history. At another level, this is a story of the triumph of history over the past, precision over ambivalence, singularity over multiplicity, standardisation over fluidity, and knowledge over the experiential dynamics of seeing. Keywords: Saffron; history of colours; Indian national flag; Hinduism; symbolic nationalism (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indeco:v:51:y:2014:i:2:p:199-229 Access Statistics for this article More articles in The Indian Economic & Social History Review |
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