Social Justice Pride Flag

Overview

Queer Chennai Chronicles framed the flag in two directions. It asked Queer communities to examine caste, class, geographic and sociocultural privilege within their own spaces. It also asked participants in Ambedkarite, Dravidian or Periyarist, and Left movements to include Queer justice in their wider struggles for dignity and equality. ^[1]

Moulee explained that discussions of Queer rights in Tamil Nadu also needed to account for caste and class. He described the design as a reminder to remain "conscious when we wave the rainbow flag". In a later interview he summarized the underlying problem more broadly: "Being queer isn't the only identity we carry." ^[2][6]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

Queer communities in Tamil Nadu, situated in relation to Ambedkarite, Dravidian or Periyarist, and Left social-justice movements

Movement

Ambedkarite and anti-caste politics; Dravidian and Periyarist politics; Self-Respect; Left and Socialist politics; Queer liberation in Tamil Nadu

Language Context

Tamil and English

National Context

India; Tamil Nadu; Chennai

The design is grounded in Tamil Nadu's political history rather than offered as a universal representation of Queer people across India. Queer Chennai Chronicles wrote that "in Tamil Nadu, the Ambedkarite, Dravidian, and Leftist ideologies and movements have played significant roles in demand for equal rights", and that Queer rights cannot be discussed "by ignoring other social issues which affect and shape us as Queer individuals". ^[1]

The organization's English and Tamil statements use related but not identical terms. The English names the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Leftist traditions; the Tamil corresponds to Ambedkarite, Periyarist and Leftist; and the Tamil title frames the design as a Self-Respect flag. Dravidian, Periyarist and Self-Respect are closely connected historical traditions and are not interchangeable labels. ^[1][7]

Creators

The Creators

Attribution notes

Queer Chennai Chronicles' bilingual launch statement credits Moulee with the flag's design. Contemporary reporting quoted both Moulee and fellow organizer LJ Violet using collective language about its purpose. The entry therefore credits Moulee as the primary designer, Queer Chennai Chronicles as the releasing organization, and Violet as a documented organizational collaborator and spokesperson. ^[1][2] The creator-attributed PNG was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the account Section377 under CC BY-SA 4.0, and Rainbowlack later made the SVG vectorization from it. ^[3][4]

Origin

Country

India

Region / state

Tamil Nadu

City

Chennai

Specific Place

Kavikko Convention Centre, No. 6, Second Main Road, CIT Colony, Mylapore, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600004

Place Type

Release venue

Origin Type

release venue

Physical Origin Status

Creation location not separately documented.

Released in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, at the Kavikko Convention Centre in Mylapore. The release site is documented; the creation location is not.

The flag was released at the inaugural Chennai Queer LitFest, held at the Kavikko Convention Centre in Mylapore, Chennai, on 7 July 2018. The official festival page gives the date and venue. ^[8] The release site is documented; where Moulee drew the artwork is not.

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2018

First documented public presentation

July 7, 2018

Documented circulation

2018 to present

Creation Bounds

Queer Chennai Chronicles released the flag on 7 July 2018 at the inaugural Chennai Queer LitFest. The organization’s bilingual statement is dated 7 July, the official festival page gives the same date and venue, and The News Minute published contemporaneous coverage that day. ^[1][8][2] When the design was drawn is not separately documented. Both Wikimedia Commons files give 7 July 2019 in their DateTimeOriginal field, one year after the documented launch; the SVG inherits the value from the PNG it was traced from. No source supports a 2019 date. ^[3][4]

Queer Chennai Chronicles named its precedents in the launch statement. It pointed to the South African Gay Pride Flag, introduced after apartheid in 1994 as a hybrid of the rainbow flag and the national flag, and to the Philadelphia Pride Flag, which added black and brown stripes in June 2017 to represent people of colour who are "underrepresented, marginalised and ignored and even intentionally excluded". Both were cited as precedents for adapting the rainbow to local political conditions. ^[1]

Moulee later explained why Philadelphia’s solution was not transferable. Of the brown stripe added there as a gesture of inclusion, he asked: "But what relevance did that have in India, where we are all different shades of brown?" He described the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Left movements as fundamental to LGBTQ rights in India because they challenge established hierarchies, adding that "the existing mainstream discourse sometimes misses out the nuances of queer politics". ^[6]

The English and Tamil versions of the launch statement name the second movement differently. The English text calls it Dravidian; the Tamil text uses பெரியாரிய, Periyarist, after E. V. Ramasamy. Both are Queer Chennai Chronicles’ own wording. ^[1][7]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Rainbow Pride Flag

Sibling flags

Alberta Gay Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Anarcha-Queer Flag (rainbow variant), Argentina Gay Flag, Australia Gay Flag, Brazil Gay Flag

+ 44 more

British Columbia Gay Flag, Canadian Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Chile Gay Flag, Dominican Republic Gay Flag, Egypt Gay Flag, European Union Gay Flag, France Gay Flag, Gay Pride Flag of Pakistan, Heteroflexible Pride Flag, Heterosexual / Straight Pride Flag, Homoflexible Pride Flag, India Gay Flag, Italy Gay Flag, Japan Gay Flag, Jewish Gay Pride Flag, Manitoba Gay Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick Gay Flag, Newfoundland Gay Flag, Northwest Territories Gay Flag, Nova Scotia Gay Flag, Nunavut Gay Flag, Ontario Gay Flag, Palestinian Gay Pride Flag, Panama Gay Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Prince Edward Island Gay Flag, Quebec Gay Flag, Rainbow Flag with White Triangle (Sapporo), Rainbow Israel Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag (2014, Angela Getler), Russia Gay Flag, Saskatchewan Gay Flag, South African Gay Pride Flag, Switzerland Gay Flag, Tanzania Gay Flag, Texas Rainbow Flag, Turkish Gay Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation), Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown), Yukon Territory Gay Flag

The six-stripe Rainbow Pride Flag is the direct visual parent: the Social Justice flag retains its field and adds three nested points at the hoist. ^[3]

The South African Gay Pride Flag and the Philadelphia Pride Flag are documented precedents named by Queer Chennai Chronicles in the launch statement, cited as examples of adapting the rainbow to a particular political and regional context. Their relationship to this design is methodological and political rather than a direct visual derivation. ^[1]

The Social Justice and Progress Pride flags both place nested pointed forms at the hoist of a six-stripe field and were released in 2018. No source located connects their development, and the launch statement names different precedents.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 4 records across 4 generations.

Ancestors -3

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestor

Rainbow Pride Flag

This record

Social Justice Pride Flag

Colors & Symbolism

The flag places Queer liberation in Tamil Nadu inside the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Left movements rather than beside them, and pairs that solidarity with an internal critique of privilege. The launch statement asks Queer communities to examine "the caste, class, geographical and other socio-cultural privileges some of us have which also marginalises fellow queer voices", and asks non-Queer participants in those three movements to stand as allies "in our fight for self-respect, dignity, and against oppression". ^[1]

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

Blue

Ambedkarite and anti-caste politics. Moulee names blue and black together for the Ambedkarite and Dravidian movements without assigning one colour to each; the Mist LGBTQ Foundation product listing gives blue to the Ambedkarite movement alone. ^[6][5]

Black

Dravidian or Periyarist politics. Moulee names blue and black together for the Ambedkarite and Dravidian movements; the Mist LGBTQ Foundation listing gives black to the Self-Respect Movement, Periyar’s movement under another name, which is a one-to-one assignment neither first-party source makes. Agnish Ray, writing in Elephant, adds that black is considered inauspicious in Hinduism and that using it "challenged religious hegemony"; that reading is the writer’s, not a quotation from Moulee. ^[6][5]

Red

Left politics. Moulee identified it specifically with Socialism; the Mist LGBTQ Foundation listing gives "left values". ^[6][5]

The six rainbow stripes

Queer community and diversity. Queer Chennai Chronicles described the rainbow collectively as having "the colours of a rainbow to represent the diversity of our community". ^[1]

Three sources gloss the added colours and they do not agree on how specific the assignment is. The launch statement names the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Leftist movements of Tamil Nadu and assigns no colour to any of them. ^[1] Moulee, interviewed two years later, said the flag "incorporated blue and black to symbolise the Ambedkarite and Dravidian political ideologies, with red representing Socialism", pairing two colours with two movements rather than one to one. ^[6] The Mist LGBTQ Foundation, which sells a physical reproduction, gives a one-to-one mapping of black to the Self-Respect Movement, blue to the Ambedkarite movement and red to left values; it is a seller’s description and carries no creator attribution. ^[5] This entry follows the first two and records the third as the commercial gloss it is. Gilbert Baker’s individual stripe meanings are not applied to the rainbow field: Queer Chennai Chronicles described it collectively rather than stripe by stripe. ^[1]

No creator-issued color specification has been located. These are the exact fills in the 2023 Commons SVG derived from Moulee's creator-attributed PNG; they document that file rather than an official production standard. ^[4] Queer Chennai Chronicles described the rainbow field collectively, as having "the colours of a rainbow to represent the diversity of our community", and did not assign a meaning to each stripe. ^[1]

Design

Aspect Ratio

Approximately 9:16 in the creator-attributed digital artwork

Ratio Notes

No official proportion statement has been located. The creator-attributed PNG is 2,579 by 1,453 pixels and its later SVG vectorization is nominally 2,584 by 1,456, both approximately 9:16 as the archive expresses ratios, or 16:9 in width-to-height terms. A later physical reproduction sold by Mist LGBTQ Foundation uses 3:5. ^[3][4][5]

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

6

Layout

horizontal stripes with nested hoist chevrons

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet

Additional Symbols

Black outer chevron (Ambedkarite and Dravidian politics, per Moulee in Elephant), Blue middle chevron (Ambedkarite and Dravidian politics, per Moulee in Elephant), Red inner triangle (Socialism)

Six equal horizontal rainbow bands are overlaid at the hoist by three nested pointed forms. Black is outermost and reaches farthest toward the fly, blue is inside it, and red forms the innermost triangle. The black and blue layers appear as chevron-shaped bands around the red triangle. ^[4]

The red triangle carries the same value as the rainbow field's red stripe, #E51E25, exactly. The blue layer is not the field's blue: it is a deeper #1D439B against the stripe's #3E5FAC. Both are observations of the file rather than stated design decisions. ^[4]

Six rainbow stripes carry three nested pointed forms at the hoist, pointing toward the fly: black outermost, then blue, then red innermost. The added colours name political movements rather than identity groups. Queer Chennai Chronicles’ launch statement names the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Leftist movements of Tamil Nadu as the traditions the flag stands with, and assigns no colour to any of them. ^[1] The colour-by-colour reading comes from Moulee two years later: the flag "incorporated blue and black to symbolise the Ambedkarite and Dravidian political ideologies, with red representing Socialism". ^[6] That statement pairs blue and black with the two movements jointly rather than one to one, so which of the two each colour carries is not settled by any located source. The Progress Pride Flag of the same year places a comparable pointed device at the hoist of a six-stripe field, but no source connects the two designs.

Usage & Adoption

Geographic Usage

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Online Usage

Wikimedia Commons

Event Usage

Chennai Queer LitFest, 7 July 2018 (release)

Current Status

Available in digital circulation; later physical reproduction documented

The flag's release at the 2018 Chennai Queer LitFest is well documented. No independently verified record of formal adoption or sustained event use has been located. The design later circulated through Wikimedia Commons, appeared in international writing about Queer flag design, and was offered as a physical 3 by 5 foot flag by Mist LGBTQ Foundation by 2025. ^[8][3][6][5]

Discourse & Debates

Common misidentifications

• The Social Justice and Progress Pride flags both place nested pointed forms at the hoist of a six-stripe field and were released in 2018. No source located connects their development, and Queer Chennai Chronicles' launch statement names different precedents.

Queer Chennai Chronicles capitalises Queer in its own statement, as this archive does. Its English statement names the Ambedkarite, Dravidian and Leftist traditions; the Tamil statement corresponds to Ambedkarite, Periyarist and Leftist; and the Tamil title frames the design through Self-Respect. These traditions are closely connected but are not interchangeable labels. ^[1][7]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

The creator-attributed Commons file

• Social Justice Pride Flag · Credit: Designed by Moulee. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Section377 in 2019; vector version by Rainbowlack, 2023. CC BY-SA 4.0. · Wikimedia Commons · verifiedRights CC BY-SA 4.0. The Commons file record gives the Artist as Moulee and the Credit as "Own work" for the uploader, Section377. Reuse requires attribution, a licence link, an indication of changes, and share-alike distribution. Rights information