Author: Vikram Sampath,TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: Jun 7, 2023
URL:    https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/the-sceptre-that-haunts-nehruvian-naysayers/ articleshow/100800627.cms

Those questioning the placement of Sengol in the new Parliament devalue Indians’ collective memory and civilisational symbols

Much water has flown under the Kaveri since the controversy around the Chola iconography of the Sengol and its installation in the new Parliament. Both the government and its opponents made valid points and counterpoints with the media discussing ad nauseam long-forgotten Chola history.

Ironically, it was recently claimed Cholas were not Hindu, but now an important symbolism of their court is termed a sign of Hindu/Brahminical supremacy.

Undoubtedly, a religious ritual was held in New Delhi in the wee hours of August 14, 1947, in which Jawaharlal Nehru had reluctantly participated. Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya note in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (2000) that alongside Rajendra Prasad, Nehru sat cross-legged around a holy fire amidst chanting of hymns.

The Sengol was conferred on him, writes Perry Anderson in After Nehru (2012), by “Hindu priests [who] arrived posthaste from Tanjore for the ritual”. In a benediction to Nehru, they chanted verses of Kolaru Pathigam: “This golden Sengol is yours and symbol of our [people’s] rule…you will rule, it is my command!”

In Freedom at Midnight (1975), Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins paint an evocative picture: “As once Hindu holy men…conferred upon ancient India’s kings their symbols of power, so the sannyasin had come…to bestow their antique emblems of authority on the man about to assume the leadership of a modern Indian nation.”

Indian Express (August 13, 1947) reported that post-ritual, the Sengol was to be taken in procession to the Constituent Assembly hall where the secular oath-taking was to occur to the accompaniment of nadaswaram by Adheenam musician TN Rajarathnam Pillai. In 1955, criticising Nehru for participating in “Brahminical rituals”, BR Ambedkar scoffed about a Brahmin becoming India’s first prime minister and wearing the “raja dand” Brahmins gave him (Writings and Speeches, Vol I, (1979)).

In a Chola ritual on anointing, the royal priest vested the Sengol in the incumbent king’s hands. Ancient Tamil texts extol the Sengol as embodiment of righteousness, virtues and ethical rule.

Journalist Dosabhai Framji Karaka wrote in Betrayal of India (1950): “It was traditional…to derive power and authority from holy men. Pandit Nehru yielded to…religious ceremony because…this was the traditional way of assuming power. The mood of New Delhi had become almost superstitious.”

It is but obvious this was an unofficial, religious ceremony, only symbolic of the change of guard. It will remain a mystery if Lord Mountbatten received it first. There are no records. But one might deduce the “posthaste” arrival of priests was to coincide with Mountbatten’s return to Delhi from Pakistan’s independence celebrations on August 14. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.

Regressive symbols?

Fact remains that a Hindu ceremony to vest the new prime minister with a symbol that stood for transfer of power, that was taken in procession to the new assembly, invokes gravitas to the episode than mere private gift-presentation.

Criticising the Sengol as a monarchical symbol is forgetting that emblems of independent India — the lions, and the wheel in our Tricolour — have monarchic roots to Ashoka’s Sarnath pillar. Does that make them regressive symbols of the empire?

Recasting ancient symbols in democracies is common practice. The old Parliament was constructed by British monarchs. Were we for 75 years then conducting legislative business in a symbol of colonial oppression? How far will one stretch demands for documentary proof, disregarding oral narratives? Are we to suspect accounts of Kanchi Mahaperiyava who recounted this first in 1978 or the Adheenam records merely because mutts and seers are not believable; their archives of inferior historical value?

In Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government in a policy note (2021-22) to the assembly mentioned: “Swamigal handed over the gold-plated silver sceptre to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This signified transfer of power from the British… Lord Mountbatten to the first Prime Minister of India.” Is the DMK, a Congress ally, complicit in establishing a Hindu Rashtra too?

Mahatma Gandhi’s personal secretary from 1943 to 1948 Venkita Kalyanam, who was behind Bapu when he fell to bullets, had confessed he was not sure if ‘Hey Ram!’ were indeed the last words. Being thus in a realm of ambiguity with no written account, do we then remove that plaque from Rajghat too?

Naysayers consistently undermine Indians’ collective memory — whether on Ayodhya or Rani Padmini’s jauhar or Tipu Sultan’s atrocities. By questioning them and quoting written evidence (possibly by a contemporary Mughal or British chronicler), they delegitimise people’s histories. The counter-narrative to Sengol tells us more about the negative minds who would rather besmirch a ritual than participate in the renewal of the Indian republic.

That the Sengol was relegated as a “walking stick” in Anand Bhawan is symptomatic of a Nehruvian malaise that appreciated the past only as a museum piece rather than living tradition. Nehru’s flashpoint over Somnath with President Rajendra Prasad and KM Munshi and his fears of Hindu revivalism echo the Sengol’s unfortunate destiny.

The old had to be eased out and replaced with a new India with a tenuous connection to its past. In the process of establishing constitutional patriotism, civilisational symbols were consigned to the bins of history. It is the soul of that nation, long suppressed, that is finding utterance.

Parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor called for embracing this symbol from the past to affirm values of our present — placing the Sengol in the Lok Sabha affirms sovereignty resides there, with the people. One hopes his partymen and affiliated media take heed and let the Kaveri flow.