Westford Man Invents New World Flag

Today Westford, tomorrow…the World?

One Westford man has created a flag which he hopes can one day become the symbol for the entire human race, and he’s starting with his quest to promote the flag right here in town.

The quest began earlier this year when the Crisafulli Elementary School Advisory Council discovered that 56 countries were represented within the community. Advisory Council member Dr. Chaitanya Hiremath was tasked with posting all of the flags in the school lobby, and during this task, he came to a particular conclusion.

“I realized that we didn’t have a world flag, so I went back and started researching,” said Hiremath. “I found out that there are quite a few world flags such as the UN flag and the Earth flag, but no flag that can be truly used by everyone.”

He thought he saw a solution to this conundrum with a flag that had pictures of all the other flags on it, but that looked too busy, figuring that an entirely new flag was needed to represent the planet.

“What’s unique about Earth is life, so the grandeur of life has to be represented (in a flag),” he said.

The flag he designed is a picture of the world’s continents placed upon a green background which he says is to remind people about protecting the world’s environment.

Between the picture of the globe and the green background is a ring of animals portrayed as a clock without hands to represent the timeless nature of evolution on Earth, ranging from simple organisms at the start going clockwise to humans at the top.

Hiremath has already gotten the flag displayed at the J.V Fletcher Library as part of their summer reading program, but his ultimate goal is to have one day of the year where the flag flies above all other flags, citing that just as Massachusetts is part of the United States, the United States and all other countries are part of the world.

He requested the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday night if there was a day where he could do this the Town Common, something the Board of Selectmen were unsure of due to etiquette regarding the American flag.

“It won’t happen overnight,” said Hiremath on his goal to raise his world flag above all others for a day. “It has to be advertised to different people around the world, and since it was born here, what we do here will help determine what other people do.”

The Selectmen recommended that Hiremath propose his request as a resolution at the Special Town Meeting in October, which he told Patch he is now planning to do.

More information on his flag can be found at scientificworldflag.org