Democracies, I was taught, always had certain salient features that distinguished them, without which, they would be reduced to being mere totalitarian states that hadn’t trodden a day upon the path of revolution and liberation. A revered, respected, unanimously agreed upon, equal, unprejudiced constitution, written or unwritten, was foremost amongst these features that protected the fabric of a democracy from splitting at the seams. Or, that was what was being taught about democracies in Indian schools until India decided to completely omit the chapters on democracy and constitution from its syllabus in 2023, to make way for mythology stories like Damodar Savarkar flying out of Andaman jail on the backs of bulbul birds to visit his motherland every day.
A parliament and the building that hosted it were sacred edifices, vowing to govern unwaveringly under the rules of the constitution, impartially representing and upholding the rights of all its citizens, across castes and creeds. The more mature a democracy, the older its parliament building. While parliament buildings across the world were built to last and remain as eminent symbols of the countries, India, in its mere 76th year of independence, has inaugurated a brand new, ornate parliament building, built at a whopping cost of 971 Crore Rupees ($120 million), flaunting an excessive seating capacity of 1,272 members. While the old parliament building was 92 years old, with a lifespan of more than 150 years and was designed to be earthquake-resistant, incorporating architectural styles from different parts of India, it is still much younger when compared to the legislative buildings of other countries. While reconstructions and renovations are a necessity in the case of old buildings, to completely turn away from our rich heritage and attempt to create a fresh one is an insult to India’s struggle for independence and the exorbitant price that was paid for the air of Independent India. While the building is being criticised for the lack of consultation, environmental damage, and the extravagant cost, it has also come under heavy scrutiny for the manner in which it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The inauguration ceremony itself was so laden with deep symbolisms and motifs suggesting that the new parliament building is more than just a necessary upgrade: it is a tribute to Modi’s unchallenged reign in India. Or as veteran Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah called it, ‘the supreme leader’s monument to himself.’
The Absence of the Titular Head of the Democracy
The office of the President of India, is indeed a titular one but constitutionally, the most important one. The President of India is the commander in chief of the country’s three-armed forces; the navy, army and air force, the first citizen of the country and its head of state while the Prime Minister, despite his executive powers, is only a head of government. The absence of President Draupadi Murmu from the inauguration ceremony on 26th May, has sparked many questions about the Prime Minister and his party’s delusions of themselves for flouting constitutional propriety. In fact, the foundation stone laying ceremony, held in 2020 was also accomplished entirely by the Prime Minister who vowed that this step would be a testament to the heritage of India, completely ignoring the then President of India, Ram Nath Kovind. Interestingly, when the King of Cambodia, on his recent state visit arrived in India, he was received by President Murmu, who then went on to introduce him to the entire cabinet of ministers including Prime Minister Modi who, hands folded, patiently waited for his turn for an introduction. It is significant though to note that both these Presidents who were excluded from these symbolic ceremonies belong to the backward castes of Indian society. While former President Ram Nath Kovind hailed from a scheduled caste, President Murmu is the first president to belong to a tribal community. The ceremonies at the parliament site had havans and pujas conducted by upper caste Brahmin priests. The foundation stone laying ceremony had pujaris from Sringeri Math in Karnataka flown in for the Bhoomi pujan and the inauguration ceremony was graced by Adheenams from Tamil Nadu.
The Role of Religion Inside a Legislative Building
The Inauguration ceremony done on the 26th of May last Sunday, reeked with a suspicious air of something so much more. Devoid of all members of opposition, the new parliament building was inaugurated solely by the Prime Minister along with nearly 21 seers from a Math in Tamil Nadu, semi-clad in red and saffron robes, with three strokes of holy ash smeared across their foreheads. An eerie sight to witness, it begged the question of the role and presence of religious scholars and attire inside a supposedly impartial and neutral parliament house. Does this sentence imply that this is the initial stage of a trend where numerous saffron-clad gurus will begin to occupy the parliament house, which consequently loses its impartiality and neutrality?
While the BJP party, despite their turbulent relationship with Jawaharlal Nehru, made elaborate claims to mimic him as he first took office as prime minister of independent India for, he too flew in emissaries from a sanyasi order in Tamil Nadu, the difference that is striking though is that he hosted these emissaries at his own residence, the Anand Bhavan and not in the parliament of India, which was graced only by the Constituent Assembly that took the reins of India from the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. Ironically however, in the recent anti-Hijab campaign in Karnataka last year, the then ruling BJP government had left no stone unturned to question the role of religious attire in government and educational institutions, leading the way to a controversial verdict of banning the hijab inside educational campuses in Karnataka, deterring many girls of the Muslim community from accessing higher education. It is beginning to seem a lot like the BJP party’s intolerance to religion is limited to one community only and is largely accepting of saffron colours inside all institutions.
The Elephant in the Room: The Sengol
After losing the gateway to the south, the Karnataka elections, irretrievably, steps were soon seen being taken for the appeasement of the state of Tamil Nadu as preparations began in full swing for the decisive Lok Sabha elections of 2024. The inauguration ceremony in the north seemed a lot like an event that was forced to pay unusual homage to Tamil traditions and customs. Apart from the 21 seers who were invoked to bless the ceremony, the tradition of the sengol, a holy scepter, was also borrowed from Tamil ascension culture. Again, despite the government’s claims that they were only recreating the historic, hair raising, patriotic moment of Indian independence, when the scepter was handed over to Jawaharlal Nehru by Tamil seers, history meekly begs to differ. The Sengol, or the scepter, a long golden staff adorned with the bull nandi, supposedly the all-seeing symbol of justice, placed safely by Prime Minister Modi behind the seat of the Speaker in the parliament house to ensure smooth and ‘just’ legislative functioning has got more to do with Hindu traditions than with Nehru. The sengol is associated with a divine right theory of power and sovereignty. Murals and paintings across Tamil Nadu depict goddesses handing over the scepter to kings who would then rule in their name. As this wasn’t possible in real life, a brahmin priest handed over the scepter to the king.
If the sengol is indeed a symbol of a monarch, then why was it so blatantly, endorsed and placed in the hands of the servant of the people, the elected leader of a democracy? Dating back to the moment in 1947, upon being asked by a very traditional, Englishman Mountbatten if there were any Indian customs for the transfer of power, C.Rajagopalachari, the last governor-general of India referred to the Tamil tradition of the sengol, which was then used to depict the handover of power from British to Indian hands. Despite that, there is no evidence of the sengol ever being presented to Mountbatten nor of him placing it in the hands of Nehru. The sengol was brought by two seers to the Nehru residence to commemorate him for his efforts in the struggle for independence and as a congratulatory gesture to the first governing head of India. Lastly, the sengol was never, ever kept in the parliament, to oversee justice or otherwise, but rather was almost immediately sent to the National Museum to be preserved as a heritage piece.
Yet, one such sengol was brought to the new parliament building by 21 seers who blessed it with flowers and was placed venerably in the hands of the prime minister before following him inside the parliament to declare his place in those hallowed halls as the unquestioned, unchallenged, vicegerent of God on earth. The doubt though remains: in a self-governing, acknowledged democracy, power was transferred from whom to whom? Or, have we, in a bizarre turn of events, transferred power from a democratic system into the hands of an oligarch?
Coronation or Inauguration?
With shlokas replacing hymns, the sengol replacing the scepter, the 21 adheenams replacing the archbishop, the pomp and grandeur at the inauguration ceremony was an almost mirror reflection of the resplendent coronation ceremony of King Charles III in England. The event itself, as described by The Wire, “was a religious theatre with prayers, prostrations, ash-smeared sadhus standing in a place where they did not belong, and finally ornamented with a ceremonial mace intended to burnish the event with historical pedigree.”
With most of the opposition absent from the inauguration, the only one’s present, the lawmakers in whose hands lies the fate of this country hollered Modi, Modi, like in a marketplace, sounding much like an echo from England of Long Live the King. Along with the opening of the new parliament building have we also placed a crown upon the head of a king that bows only before symbols and sadhus?
The Date of the Inauguration
In India, thousands of patriotic souls selflessly worked to free the country from the chains of slavery. Yet, the inauguration date chosen for the new parliament building was to mark the 140th birth anniversary of Damodar Savarkar, a man who craved British slavery, played no constructive role in the struggle for independence and had in fact submitted himself cowardly to the colonial system. Damodar Savarkar is the founding father of the concept of Hindutva, the bloodthirsty ideology of the RSS that gave birth to the BJP party. If we are to commemorate historic, patriotic days on the birth anniversaries of such men, then will we also be forced to acknowledge them and not Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel, Bismil and Azad as those that delivered the independence of India to us? With chapters on Gandhian principles and Hindu-Muslim unity disappearing from textbooks, Savarkar is beginning to look very much like a gleeful, emerging, glorious freedom fighter and not a man with blood and treachery on his hands.
The Absence of an Opposition
The new parliament was inaugurated amidst the resounding emptiness of the entire opposition. A joint statement of nineteen parties was issued stating that the inauguration would be boycotted by them because they felt ‘the soul of democracy had been sucked’. They raised issues such as the need for a new building, the sidelining of President Murmu, and the lack of consensus. The boycott was probably initiated with a hope for some appeasement from the ruling party, but indifferent, the building was inaugurated with the historic absence of an opposition with the Prime Minister and his lackeys ruling the day with the blessings of semi-clad godmen, who might in the coming days, even substitute the lawmakers in their seats at the parliament that now houses more than its previous capacity.
Wrestlers’ Protest
Only feet away from the inauguration site, the wrestlers of India, some of them Olympians, were dragged across the street, manhandled and shut like criminals inside police vans to be caged for speaking truth to power. The protestors were demanding for the arrest of Wrestling Federation Chief, Brij Bhushan Singh, on charges of sexual assault on a minor and the girls in the federation. But the police, even with ten FIRS in hand couldn’t lay their hands on him because the man in question was being garlanded and honoured inside the Parliament building. The wrestlers left with the police, teary-eyed and exhausted, congratulating Indians of the New India that the new parliament building was offering. The silence of the PM and his party on an issue so big clearly shouted only one thing: that BJP henchmen would loot, cheat, rape and destroy even as the gold nandi stares, all the while with the silent blessings of the Prime Minister upon them.
New India
The Prime Minister and his party exhausted themselves dry last Sunday calling the inauguration a stepping stone into ‘New India’. When the nation asks what the ‘New India’ looks like, the PM only has silence to offer. From the looks of the farce that the inauguration event was, New India: stands with its daughters for a beti bachao propaganda program but uses its force to drag them across the streets to protect their assailant hiding behind a BJP ticket; New India measures the development of the country with new statues and buildings that stretch the budget tight, but has very little to show on any real parameters of growth; New India will have laws being passed without the debate; opinion and approval of a strong opposition; New India has a vishwaguru (global leader) who speaks much about India’s international reputation but fears facing the press back home; New India calls for beti padhao but stops its girls from accessing education if they belong to the other religion; New India decides what its citizens eat, read, watch, learn and play; New India keeps silent as a whole state is set ablaze; New India shelters alleged rapists inside its walls; New India shuts down internet and connectivity the minute it senses even the hint of a dissent; New India is a steady downgrade into mythology, kingship, caste disparities, seer worship, and a society devoid of any value for the educated class; New India moves one step forward towards the future but two steps backwards into its dark, dark past; New India may seem bright and sparkling for now, but the New India is no longer a democracy.
Even with a Nehru style welcome into the new parliament, Prime Minister Modi hasn’t come even close to being catapulted into the Nehru club nor anywhere near its popularity, for Modi is on the side that not only opposed the likes of Nehru and their broad minded vision of India, but also schemed against them with the colonizers into derailing it’s progress back into its dark past rife with caste ideologies, class disparities and social evils like sati, child marriage and dowry,
They say, when a clown enters the palace, he doesn’t get crowned king; but the palace becomes a circus. India, likewise has crowned its king in an extravagant palace with promises of an unquestioned reign. The circus to follow is looking far from hilarious.
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Zainab Aliyah is a Staff Writer at The Cognate.
