Do the 24 spokes each have a separate official meaning?
The National Portal of India identifies the wheel as the Dharma Chakra and gives its 24-spoke design, but it does not assign a different meaning to each spoke.
Flag of India
Three equal-width horizontal bands and a wheel in the centre.
Current flag
Flag emoji 🇮🇳
India
Flag facts
Information about the flag’s design, colours and proportions.
- Proportion
- 2:3 height: width
Flag design
Three equal-width horizontal bands and a wheel in the centre.
- Layout
- Horizontal bands
- Number of bands
- 3
- Details
- Equal-width bands
- Symbols
- Wheel – Centre
- Colours
- Orange, white, green, and blue
Sources
- Proportion: National Portal of India – National Flag
The tricolour and the Ashoka Chakra
India's Constituent Assembly adopted the flag in its present form on 22 July 1947, shortly before independence. In India it is often called the Tricolour, or Tiranga.
The navy-blue wheel at the centre is the Ashoka Chakra. The National Portal of India identifies its design with the wheel on the abacus of the Lion Capital at Sarnath and counts 24 spokes. It describes the motif as the Dharma Chakra, or wheel of law.
Frequently asked questions
Country facts
- Type
- Country
- Name
- India
- Continent
- Asia
- Capital
- New Delhi
- ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
- IN
- ISO 3166-1 alpha-3
- IND
- ISO 3166-1 numeric
- 356
- Top-level domain
- .in
- Area
- 3,287,590 km²
- Population
- 1,463,865,525 (2025)
- Currency
- INR
- Calling code
- +91
Flags with a similar layout
These flags come from the same region and share one or more design characteristics.
Historical flags: India (1526–)
Images are ordered by the years listed in the collection. A listed year may not be the flag’s official adoption year.
About historical flags
Vexilla's historical flag collection includes former flags associated with present-day countries and territories, as well as flags of states, empires, and other authorities that historically governed them.
A flag's inclusion in a country's historical collection does not necessarily mean that the country was independent at the time or that the flag was its own national flag.
The years shown are based on historical records in the dataset and do not always indicate the date of official adoption. The collection is not exhaustive, and historical usage, territorial coverage, and interpretations may vary.
