Sengol

''The Sengol'' ( IAST: ceṅkōl) is a gold-plated, silver sceptre that is currently installed in New Parliament House in New Delhi, India. The sceptre was originally gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, by a Tamil ''Adheenam'' in a private religious ceremony on the evening before the Independence of India. The ''Sengol'' was housed at Allahabad Museum for seventy years until 2023, when it was moved to its present location upon the building's inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

History

As the Independence of India drew near, Jawaharlal Nehru and other members of the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress) took part in religious ceremonies and received gifts. On such an occasion on 14 August 1947, emissaries from the Thiruvaduthurai Adheenam Matha, a Hindu monastery in Tamil Nadu, presented Nehru with the ''Sengol'' at his home. According to a report in ''Time:

The event had negligible impact on public discourse at the time; contemporaneous news clips recorded the gift of the ''Sengol'' as a courtesy. Soon afterwards, the ''Sengol'' and other belongings of Nehru were donated to Allahabad Museum, where the sceptre was labelled "Golden Stick gifted to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru".

The ''Sengol'' remained largely forgotten until it was used in the inauguration of New Parliament House, New Delhi, in 2023. At the inauguration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was accompanied by Hindu priests heading the 20 '' Adheenams'' in Tamil Nadu, installed the ''Sengol'' near the chair of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Simultaneously, the Government of India propagated a now-discredited narrative of the ''Sengol'' being a symbol of the transfer of power from the United Kingdom to India.

Government narrative

The narrative appears to have been derived from a year-old article by Swaminathan Gurumurthy, a Hindu nationalist, published in ''Thuglak'' magazine; Gurumurthy attributed it to the recollections of Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi, the 68th head of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, as told to a disciple in 1978.

According to the Government, upon being asked by Lord Mountbatten about a symbol to mark the transfer of power, Nehru discussed the issue with his fellow Congress leader C. Rajagopalachari, who informed Nehru of the Chola tradition of the transfer of the ''sengol'' and with his agreement, approached the seer of Thiruvaduthurai Adheenam Matha to make one. A delegation of monks flew to Delhi to present this ''sengol'' first to Mountbatten and then to Nehru in an official ceremony.

These claims are dubious. There is no evidence either Mountbatten or Rajagopalachari was involved in the process, that the ceremony had any official significance, that Nehru perceived the event as a transfer of power, or that the delegation travelled by air. Facing criticism for lacking in facts, the Government published a collection of sources, ranging from monographs by academic historians to a blog that rejected its narrative, as evidence; they did not support any of the claims.

Electoral context

According to analysts, the 2023 episode with the ''Sengol'' was part of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) strategy to present itself as champions of Tamil culture. The party is aiming to gain electoral significance in South India through its Look South campaign. Soon after the ''Sengol'' installation, Amit Shah, one of BJP's main strategists, asked Tamil voters to elect 25 BJP coalition legislators to Parliament as a show of gratitude.

Design

Vummidi Bangaru Chetty, a jeweller from Chennai, crafted the ''Sengol''. The ''Sengol'' is a handcrafted, gold-plated sceptre about long, and has a diameter of about at the top and at the bottom. It encases a wooden staff and is surmounted by a sitting Nandi to symbolise justice and sturdiness.

Reception

Barely a fortnight after Nehru received the ''Sengol'', C. N. Annadurai, a Dravidian nationalist and the future first Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, wrote a polemical tract on the subject for ''Dravida Nadu'', pondering the socio-political implications of his acceptance. He warned the motive of the Adheenam was to convince the public later they had inaugurated the new government.

Many political analysts have noted the increasing use of Hindu grammar in the domains of the state. In 2023, ''The New York Times'' noted that this sceptre emerged as a key object encapsulating the meaning of the new Parliament, that is, "to shed not just the remnants of India's colonial past, but also increasingly to replace the secular governance that followed it". Others found the use of a monarchical relic unsuitable for a parliamentary democracy.

See also

* New Parliament House
* Ceremonial mace

References

External links

* {{Commons category-inline

Formal insignia
Indian metalwork