Ask for “the Kashmir flag” and the answer depends on where you stand. Two designs are most often meant: the red-and-white Jammu and Kashmir flag with a plough, and the green flag of Azad Kashmir with a crescent and star. Neither represents the whole region, and both are tied to a dispute that remains unresolved.
The Jammu and Kashmir flag
The flag’s roots lie in the politics of the 1930s. On 11 July 1939, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference adopted a red banner with a white plough as its party flag. The National Conference has long said the red recalls those killed in Srinagar on 13 July 1931, during protests against Dogra rule.
The state itself adopted the flag on 7 June 1952. Under the former Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, it was rectangular in a 3:2 ratio: red, with three white vertical stripes near the staff and a white plough at the centre. The stripes stood for the state’s three regions, Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. The plough stood for agriculture, and the red is commonly described as the colour of labour.
For decades it flew alongside the Indian flag. That ended on 5 August 2019, when India abrogated Article 370 and divided the state into two Union Territories. With the state’s constitution set aside, the flag lost its official status the next day.
The Azad Kashmir flag
The flag of Azad Jammu and Kashmir has an older origin than its legal standing. It was designed in 1948 by Abdul Haq Mirza, who worked at the Rawalpindi headquarters of the Azad Kashmir forces, and was known then as the “Kashmir Liberation Flag.” It became the state flag on 24 September 1975 under the Azad Jammu and Kashmir State Flag Ordinance.
The flag is green with white stripes, a gold canton at the upper hoist and a crescent and star on the fly. Its symbolism is read in more than one way. A commonly cited explanation links the green to the region’s Muslim majority and the gold to religious minorities, while the territory’s own description has also tied the stripes to snow-covered mountains. No single reading is definitive.
What about “Jammu flag”?
Readers searching for a separate Jammu flag are usually looking for the state flag above. Jammu is one of the regions its stripes represented, but it never had a flag of its own.
Why it still matters
Flags in Kashmir are rarely only flags. The Jammu and Kashmir flag is remembered by many of its supporters as a symbol of the autonomy promised to the state, and its removal remains a sore point in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Azad Kashmir flag is an everyday symbol of identity in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and among its diaspora.
Gilgit-Baltistan, also administered by Pakistan, has a separate provincial flag.