Jalur Gemilang: Why 14 Stripes for 13 States

Count the stripes on the Malaysian flag and you get 14. Count the states in the federation and you get 13. That discrepancy is not a tailor’s mistake — it is the side effect of a date, and that date is not 31 August 1957.

Short answer: the count of 14 was fixed on 16 September 1963, when the federation did in fact have 14 states. It has never been readjusted since.

The meaning of each element

The Department of Information Malaysia records the following official meanings for the Malaysian flag.

Element	Official meaning
14 red–white stripes	Unity of the 13 states and one Federation
Crescent moon	Islam as the religion of the Federation
14-point star	Unity of the 13 states and the Federal Government
Red	Courage and readiness to face obstacles and challenges
White	Purity, sincerity and earnestness
Dark blue	Unity of Malaysia’s multiracial people
Yellow	Sovereignty of the Constitutional Monarch — the royal colour

Notice one thing that is often overlooked: the stripes and the star carry the same count, not two different meanings. The star repeats the stripe count in another form. The flag’s dimensions are also fixed — 6 feet wide and 3 feet long, a 2:1 ratio.

From a five-point star to 11, to 14

This flag began as the Flag of the Federation of Malaya, and the number of its points had already changed once before 1963.

• May 1948 — a Special Committee was set up to find a flag design; 373 designs were received.
• 15 November 1949 — the design was submitted to the Federal Legislative Council. The design by Mohamed bin Hamzah, an architect with the Johor Public Works Department (JKR Johor), won the majority vote. His original design carried a five-point star; the Council asked for it to be amended to an 11-point star to show the unity of the 11 states.
• 22–23 February 1950 — the Conference of Rulers assented to the flag with an additional amendment: the colour of the crescent moon and star was changed from white to yellow, the royal colour.
• 19 April 1950 — the Federal Legislative Council passed the flag motion; British royal assent followed on 19 May 1950.
• 26 May 1950 — the 11-stripe flag flew for the first time at the Sultan of Selangor’s Palace, Kuala Lumpur.
• 31 August 1957 — the same flag was raised at the Selangor Club padang on the day of Malaya’s independence, accompanied by Negaraku, which was played publicly for the first time.
• 16 September 1963 — Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore joined the federation. The stripes and star points increased from 11 to 14.

The logic was consistent throughout that period: the count on the flag tracked the number of members of the federation. Eleven members, eleven stripes. Fourteen members, fourteen stripes.

Why 14 remained after 1965

Singapore left Malaysia on 9 August 1965 — two years after the formation of Malaysia. Arithmetically, the stripes should have dropped to 13.

They did not. Official records from the Department of Information state that the 14 stripes and the 14-point star have been retained ever since.

Instead, it is the meaning that was reread. The 14th count no longer refers to Singapore; it now refers to the Federal Government — the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya. The flag was not amended; its reading was, and the count of 14 remains accurate because the Federal Government is counted as one member.

The name came late

For 47 years this flag had no special name. The idea of naming it was raised by Dato’ Hashim bin Mat Idris and put to the fourth Prime Minister on 11 July 1995. After a committee process that rejected several early shortlists, the name proposed by Redzuan Tumin, an officer of the Department of Museums and Antiquities, was chosen: Jalur Gemilang.

The name was declared on 31 August 1997 at Dataran Merdeka, to mark the 40th anniversary of independence. Its meaning is recorded once: jalur depicts a straight path and shared direction, gemilang means radiant and glorious.

Common mistakes

• “14 stripes for 14 states.” Malaysia has not had 14 states since 1965. The 14th count is the Federal Government.
• “This flag was designed for Merdeka in 1957.” It was designed for the Federation of Malaya and had already been flying since 26 May 1950.
• “The star originally had 11 points.” Mohamed bin Hamzah’s original design carried a five-point star; 11 points was an amendment by the Federal Legislative Council.
• “The moon and star were originally yellow.” They were originally white; yellow was assented to by the Conference of Rulers in 1950 as the royal colour.
• Using Jalur Gemilang freely for commercial purposes. The flag and its name are protected by the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act 1963 (Act 414); the 2017 amendment provides for a fine of up to RM20,000 or imprisonment of up to three years, or both.

What’s next

For the context behind the date of 16 September 1963 itself, read the formation of Malaysia; for the day the 11-stripe flag was raised for the last time as the flag of the newly independent nation, read independence 1957. The melody that accompanied that moment — and why it was not a new composition — is told in Negaraku.