Republic day 2026: Jairam Ramesh recalls adoption of national emblem, ‘Satyameva Jayate’ as national motto
Noting the Constitution came into effect on this day 76 years ago, he said the history of its making continued to be analyzed ever since Granville Austin’s classic “The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation” came out in 1966 and B Shiva Rao’s magisterial five-volume “The Framing of India’s Constitution” were published by 1968.
There were undoubtedly other notable works, but he noted that Rohit De and Ornit Shani’s very recent book “Unifying the Constitution of India: A New Democratic History” deserves special mention.
Ramesh said that the first two copies of the Constitution, handwritten in English and Hindi, also had the national emblem on their cover. He said that by the end of 1947, it was decided that the national emblem would be the Ashokan Lion Capital, which was first excavated in Sarnath in 1905.
“The slogan ‘Satyameva Jayate’, taken from the Mundaka Upanishad, was added below the abacus as the national slogan only in early 1949.
“There were many who said that he should have been Satyameva Jayate and not Satyameva Jayate. Eminent Sanskrit and other scholars were consulted and they too agreed that he should have been Satyameva Jayate,” Ramesh recalled.
The Congress leader said that in mid-1956, renowned historian Radha Kumud Mookerjee, then an MP candidate, wrote that the original Lion Capital also had a wheel, which she described as ‘extraordinarily large’, placed on the shoulders of four lions. But he added that the emblem remained because it had been agreed upon for a long time and was widely used.
“In some reports published by the Constituent Assembly in 1948, the word ‘Dharmachakra Pravartanaya’ was used under the abacus. However, this was changed to Satyameva Jayate in early 1949,” Ramesh said. he said.
Interestingly, the sign ‘Dharmachakra Pravartanaya’ was lit just above the Lok Sabha Speaker’s seat in the Old Parliament House and this continued until the Lok Sabha shifted to the new building in September 2023, he added.
