The Sengol
The Sengol (IAST: ceṅkōl) is a gold-plated, silver sceptre that is installed in New Parliament House in New Delhi, India.[1] The sceptre was originally gifted to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, by a Tamil Adheenam in a religious ceremony on the evening before the Independence of India in 1947. The Sengol was housed at Allahabad Museum for seventy years until it was moved to its present location upon the building's inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2023.
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.[9] The party is aiming to gain electoral significance in South India through its Look South campaign.[13][14][15] Soon after the Sengol's installation, Amit Shah, one of BJP's main strategists,[16] asked Tamil voters to elect 25 BJP coalition legislators to Parliament as a show of gratitude.[17]
Design
Vummidi Bangaru Chetty, a jeweller from Chennai (then called Madras), crafted the Sengol.[18] The Sengol is a handcrafted, gold-plated sceptre about five feet (1.5 m) long, and has a diameter of about three inches (76 mm) at the top and one inch (25 mm) at the bottom. It encases a wooden staff and is surmounted by a sitting Nandi to symbolise justice and sturdiness.[18][19][3][20][21]
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.[22]
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".[23] Others found the use of a monarchical relic unsuitable for a parliamentary democracy.[24]
