Even as Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai requested everyone not to make controversial statements in the wake of the hijab row, his minister for rural development and panchayat raj, K S Eshwarappa, said on Wednesday that the saffron flag might become the national flag in the future.
Today in this country, we are discussing Hindutva and Hindu vichara (ideology). People used to laugh at one point when we said a Ram mandir will be constructed in Ayodhya. Aren’t we constructing it now? In the same way, sometime in the future, after 100 or 200 or 500 years, bhagwa dhwaj may become the national flag. I don’t know,” Eshwarappa told reporters while responding to Congress leader DK Shivakumar’s allegation that anti-hijab protesters had replaced the tricolour with a saffron flag at a government college in Shivamogga district.
Hundreds of years ago, the chariots of Sri Ramachandra and Maruthi had saffron flags on them. Was the tricolour flag there in our country then? Now it (tricolour) is fixed as our national flag. What respect it has to be given should be given by every person…, there is no question about it,” he said. “Now constitutionally we have accepted the tricolour as our national flag. Those who don’t respect it are traitors.”
