Global Courant
On May 38, 2023, the Indian capital of New Delhi witnessed two dramatic scenes set within 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) of each other.
Just as a new parliament building was unveiled, police officers were manipulating some of the country’s top female wrestlers who have taken home medals from the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games.
The wrestlers have been on the streets for the past month demanding an investigation into Wrestling Federation of India president Bribhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused of sexually assaulting them and other female wrestlers, including a minor. On that day, they, with their supporters, tried to march peacefully towards the new parliament building, but were stopped by the Delhi Police, whose officers pushed them around, dragged them and lifted them against their will, before detaining them and pressing charges.
Meanwhile, Singh, who is a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a member of the same parliament, entered the new building waving triumphantly to the cameras.
It is the same police force that was hesitant to even file a complaint from the wrestlers against the legislature. It took an order from the Supreme Court for the Delhi Police to perform this basic and mandatory function. But this is in line with the behavior of the Delhi Police, which reports to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s central government. Over the past eight years, it has repeatedly refused to press charges against BJP leaders who openly incite violence, and against organizers or participants of rallies calling for violence against Muslims. It has started behaving like an arm of the ruling party.
On that Sunday, the bizarre and the horrible collided. It was comical to see a prime minister, elected through a democratic process, turn the inauguration of a new parliament building into a ceremony that felt like the unveiling of a new republic with a monarchical majority color. Priests from the southern state of Tamil Nadu were flown in on special planes to conduct a ceremony akin to an emperor’s anointing.
These priests presented Modi with a golden scepter, which had been taken from a museum where it had lain for the past 75 years. It was sent there by the office of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who was given this scepter, called a sengol, by the priests of an Adheenam or Mutt – part of the Shaivite religious sect of Tamil Nadu.
These priests had come by train to Delhi on the day in August 1947 when India would be declared free and the Constituent Assembly would take power from the British monarch.
The sengol is a symbol of divine power. A variant of it exists in almost every society. Recently, King Charles III was seen holding a scepter after being anointed as the new monarch of the United Kingdom.
Nehru, the Democrat, could not allow this sengol to be part of the official inauguration ceremony of a secular democracy. Agnostic himself, he accepted it from the priests privately, in his hometown, as a gesture of respect. As noted by historians, it was placed in a museum like many other gifts he had received.
The Modi government then wove a lie around it. It claimed that the Hindu priests handed over this sengol to Lord Mountbatten of Britain, the last Viceroy of India, who then handed it over to Nehru, signifying the transfer of power from the British to the Indians.
According to the BJP government, the sengol represents the continuity of the divine power of ancient times, held on its behalf by a succession of Hindu kingdoms. That continuity was broken for 1,300 years, during which Muslims ruled India, and then a brief interlude of British rule. After the departure of the British, power should have gone back to its rightful owners, namely the Hindus. By not putting the sengol in the seat of power – parliament – and instead sending it to a museum, the BJP claims that Nehru had disrespected both the ancient Indian tradition and the ancient Indian tradition.
Historians immediately busted the lie in this purported sequence of events. But it was promoted by the print and TV media and by the ruling party as an act of historic injustice against Hindus, which Modi was now correcting. The spectacle surrounding the inauguration of the new parliament building was therefore intended to suggest the restoration of Hindu power.
The scepter was handed over to Modi with Hindu religious chants. Holding it in his hands, Modi entered the parliament building, followed by his MPs and the Speaker of the House. He then placed the sengol near the speaker’s chair, where it should remain as a reminder of that divine power.
What Modi did was not new. He has been performing similar symbolic acts for the past eight years, effectively presenting himself as a new Hindu monarch, even if elected through a democratic process. He performs religious ceremonies and unveils temples in his official capacity.
In August 2020, Modi led a groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Ram Temple at a site in the city of Ayodhya where the Babri Mosque had stood for over 500 years before being demolished by a mob mobilized over a year . campaign spearheaded by Modi’s party and its affiliates. Modi himself actively participated in that campaign.
Modi makes no secret of his contempt for India’s secular character. After his second election victory in 2019, he boasted to his party’s legislators that he had effectively banned the word secularism from India’s political discourse. The inauguration of the new parliament building was again used to give the highest seat of power in India a Hindu color.
Opposition parties had boycotted the ceremony, accusing the Modi government of violating parliamentary norms and violating constitutional principles. It was a Modi show. The President of India, the titular head of state in whose name the government functions, was not invited. The vice-president, who is also chairman of the Senate, was also excluded.
This ceremony was played live by the country’s main TV media, largely blocking the scenes of violence against wrestlers and their supporters. They were condemned as those who had clouded a sacred occasion with their selfish demands.
This contrast represents the truth of what Modi calls “New India”. On the one hand, it involves using symbols such as the sengol to try to usher in a Hindu nation. But in reality, the scenes of female wrestlers being assaulted near the new building make it abundantly clear that this nation can only prosper by depriving all citizens, including Hindus like the leading wrestlers, of their rights.
As Mehbooba Mufti, the former chief minister of the now abolished state of Jammu and Kashmir said, Hindus should not make the mistake of thinking that they are the masters of this nation. The new India, she said, would follow Kashmir in its repression – where it is difficult to even breathe freedom.
What is being built is a state where no one can claim their rights. Those who try will be suppressed. Just like the wrestlers.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.
