The House Modi Built

ON AUGUST 15, I HAD SAID from the Red Fort that this is the time, the right time. There comes a time in the history of every na­tion when the consciousness of its people awakens anew. Our time is here.” These were not just the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he inaugu­rated the new Parliament building on May 28. They en­capsulated the hopes and emotions of an entire country.

His address in the new Lok Sabha at noon was pre­ceded by an elaborate ceremony which began at 7AM and was attended by several priests, including those from the Shaivite Adheenams of Tamil Nadu sport­ing the traditional garb of ascetics of their order. After receiving the blessings of the holy seers, among them pontiffs of 20 Adheenams, in a widely watched event, Modi attended the havan that filled the majestic new hall—the fulcrum of democracy hereon—with the aroma of holy smoke, the sounds of prayer chants and the sight of civilisational continuity. Accompanied by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, he was led to the spot in a grand procession by the priests. At the appropriate mo­ment, Modi, who has shown since his elevation to the post of prime minister that he is not afraid of displaying his Hinduism with pride, installed the traditional sym­bol of justice and righteousness, the Sengol or sceptre, at the right of the speaker’s chair amid prayers for moral guidance and justice. The Sengol is five feet long, made of silver and gold, and sports a Nandi, the vehicle of Lord Shiva, on its head.

Iconic though the weekend spectacle may have been, its true message could have eluded some: the ceremonial installation of the Sengol in the newly inaugurated Par­liament building represented, for the first time, both a continuity of cultural and moral norms associated with governance in India and a pledge of allegiance to the Constitution adopted after the formation of the new sovereign state. It was a clarion call heralding liberation from the cultural subjugation India continued to be in well after August 15, 1947. It was a rallying cry of the conch shell for a renewed Hindu cultural awakening.

There is a strong historical rationale behind this worldview. The cultural colonisation that began under the Mughals— who wanted to establish Nizam-e-Mustafa (the Order of the Chosen One)—acquired radical proportions under the British. William Bentinck practically banished Sanskrit education; Charles Cornwallis enacted the Permanent Settlement and other measures that destroyed the nation’s ancient institutions; the Marquess of Dalhousie destroyed civilisational continuity to enhance the power of the East India Company. Many of the policies introduced by the British in their colonies were aimed at benefiting themselves and led to terrible outcomes for the ruled. Divide et impera (divide and rule) was a British colonialist policy used to keep Indian religions and ethnicities divided. Hinduism itself was divided by identifying hundreds of castes, putting them at loggerheads with each other for supremacy. This allowed the British to maintain their power and control over India.

According to historian Sita Ram Goel, the greatest damage that any civilisational siege engine did to India was Macaulayism in education. Goel maintained that by radically altering India’s education system, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59) en­sured that “Hindus turned anti-Hindu”. Macaulay served on the governor gen­eral’s council and played a key role in making English the medium of instruc­tion in Indian higher education. He had the dubious distinction of being credited with uprooting Indian traditions in several sectors, including finance, agri­culture, industry, etc and supplanting them with foreign systems unsuitable for India. They overrode all Indian sys­tems of thought and tradition, domi­nating employment, social power and status, upward social mobility, cultural acceptance, and so on. They derided and suppressed the socio-cultural moorings of the subcontinent’s Hindus. Macaulay created an education system aimed at eliciting “loyalty” from colonised sub­jects, which it did to a good extent, as Jawaharlal Nehru and the homegrown leadership that took power from the British later proved at a high cost to the subcontinent’s Hindu foundation for decades afterwards.

Consequently, there was a growing gulf between free India’s leadership and its masses. When Partition hap­pened, many approached the freedom struggle as an instrument for reviving Hindu India, an India where its tradi­tions and culture would have reigned supreme, given its all-pervasiveness and primacy before foreigners ruled the land. The expectation that the new rulers would celebrate the Hindu roots had gained ground because of the Muslim League’s strident demand for a separate homeland since they believed a free India would mean Hindu majoritarian rule. The British connived with Muslim intransigence. And when Muslims finally managed to create their separate state of Pakistan, the expectation was natu­rally high among Hindus that a free India would also mean the restoration of tradition and culture vandalised, first by Muslim invaders and later by the British.

In the longer run, neither Louis Mountbatten, considering that the British overlords did everything they could to stoke Muslim separatism and always preferred Muslims to Hindus, nor Nehru, a self-avowed modernist averse to anything religious in the new nation, would go along with what the events of the time appeared to dictate.

In a strange turn of developments though, both Mountbatten and Nehru ended up being accessories to a plan that appeared to herald the return of a nation set to host the resurgence of a Hindu cultural awakening. In Freedom at Midnight (1975), Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins described in detail the festivities in Delhi on the eve of Independence, noting that they had a distinct Hindu flavour. There were condescending descriptions of priests from the Shaivite mutts in Tamil Nadu who came to embellish the event. “One of the two bore a massive silver platter upon which was folded a swathe of white silk streaked in gold, the Pitambaram, the Cloth of God. The other carried a five foot sceptre, a flask of holy water from the Tanjore river, a pouch of sacred ash and a pouch of boiled rice which had been offered at dawn at the feet of Nataraja, the dancing God, in his temple in Madras. They headed for a bungalow at 17, York Road (the residence of Nehru). They sprinkled Jawaharlal Nehru with holy water, smeared his fore­head with sacred ash, laid their sceptre on his arms and draped him in the Cloth of God. To the man who had never ceased to proclaim the horror the word ‘religion’ inspired in him, their rite was a tiresome manifestation of all he deplored in his nation. Yet he submitted to it with almost cheerful humility. It was as if that proud rationalist had instinctively understood that in the awe­some tasks awaiting him, no possible source of aid, not even the occult he so scornfully dismissed, was to be totally ignored.”

This, though, was not part of a well-thought-out plan. It all happened because Mountbatten, steeped in British tradition where sceptres are supposed to mark the transfer of power, hap­pened to ask Nehru’s preference for the ceremony he would like to have. Nehru later turned to Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, an intel­lectual giant, reformer and devout Hindu who had translated the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Rajaji, as he was popularly known, delved into the ancient Chola tradition of the rajguru handing the sceptre, a symbol of transfer of power, to the newly anointed ruler as a reminder of his oath/decree or aanai to adhere to moral and social tenets and deliver justice and fair governance.

Historians of Sangam literature maintain that the practice was followed for almost 2,000 years and is mentioned in ancient texts such as the Purananooru, Kurunthogai, Perumpamaan Arupadai, and Kalithogai. Rajaji approached the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam in the old Thanjavur district, one of the oldest Saivaite mutts in India, established in the 14th century, to arrange for a sceptre. Sri Ambalavana Desika Swamigal, the seer of the Thiruvavaduthu­rai Adheenam at the time, then commissioned the five-foot long, intricately carved, gold sceptre with a miniature replica of Nandi on its head to Vummidi Bangaru, a famous jeweller, as per specifica­tions, according to the Adheenam, whose priests hail from among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Dalits.

A delegation of three people flew to Delhi to hand over the sceptre, first to Mountbatten. The sceptre was then sprinkled with holy water and sanctified according to tradition, to the background hymns of Shaivite saint Thirugnana Sambandar. At precisely 11PM on August 14, 1947, just before Nehru’s famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech at the stroke of midnight, the sceptre was handed to the first prime minister-to-be of India.

IT IS IMPORTANT to contextualise the political and cultural environment in which Nehru—a self-declared rationalist who was insistent that the new India would not be a Hindu nation—acquiesced in the Hindu rituals surrounding the Sengol at the time of Independence. In the 1946 provincial elections, Muslims had turned against Congress and won all the minority-dominated seats. The League refused to cooperate with Congress after this election. Vijender Sharma, the author of Essays on Indic History (2020), points out that the League had fought the elections on very categorical goals: the formation of a separate Islamic state carved out of India. For this, the League co-opted, persuaded, bullied, and threatened com­munity, religious and student leaders and influencers, with the Sunni Conference even declaring that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a representative of god, or Waliullah. According to David Gilmartin, fatwas were issued, threatening that there would be no Namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer) for those voting against Pakistan and they would not be buried in Muslim graveyards.

Devendra Panigrahi’s India’s Partition: The Story of Imperial­ism in Retreat (2004) mentions how influential Pirs, revered by both Hindus and Muslims, were co-opted to amplify the cause of Pakistan. In August 1945, the then governor of Punjab reported: “Here is a very serious danger of the elections being fought, so far as Muslims are concerned, on an entirely false issue. Crude Pakistan may be quite illogical, undefinable and ruinous to India and in particular to Muslims, but this does not detract from its potency as a political slogan… if Pakistan becomes an imminent reality, we shall be heading straight for bloodshed on a wide scale… it appears to me to be of vital importance to take action, before it is too late, to deflate the theory of Pakistan…”

In Punjab as much as in Bengal, the United Provinces, and other parts of India, the resounding message that went out to Mus­lims was to vote for Pakistan’s creation as believers. The League won overwhelmingly in Muslim seats in Bengal, Madras, Bom­bay, the United Provinces and Bihar on its demand for a separate electorate and the formation of an Islamic state of Pakistan, based on whipped up fears that the Hindu majority would overwhelm and subjugate Muslims who had been an intrinsic part of the ruling classes of Hindustan for decades.

There was little surprise then that the expectations of a Hin­du majority for a Hindu state grew in direct proportion to these events. Despite his much-touted aseptic personal beliefs about religion, Nehru, as the authors of Freedom at Midnight pointed out, opted to ride out the Hindu rituals involving the Sengol at the transfer of power, largely for political convenience that dictated not ignoring the overwhelming sentiment of Hindus at the time.

Full credit accrues to Nehru for the speed with which he rec­ognised the ‘folly’ he had committed. Consequently, the Sengol was banished, labelled as a golden walking stick (Nehru was in the pink of health and 58 then), and packed off to Anand Bha­van, the Nehru family home. It later became a museum to house Nehru memorabilia and is now controlled by the Nehru Memo­rial Trust headed by Sonia Gandhi. The Sengol ceremony was not considered respectable enough to be mentioned in official accounts narrating the transfer of power.

A politically astute Nehru had no illusions about the power of tradition. And how, if restored—given the powerful unifying force it was prior to foreign occupation—it would have engaged the imagination of India’s population. He was afraid of what he would call “Hindu revivalism”. It was this anxiety that led him, as well as successors Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, to de-empha­sise the Hindu-ness of India and to insert the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ into the Constitution. It would later take on ridiculous proportions, such as falsifying history, marginalising icons of the freedom struggle, rationalising the Muslim conquest of India— which Will Durant described as the “bloodiest story in history when millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword”— creating a parallel fiction, and ex-communicating from the public discourse anyone with a counter view.

This would have continued had it not been for Narendra Modi, who wore his convictions on his sleeve and had no qualms about identifying with the Sanatani tradition that was being disparaged as regressive by his predecessors. Despite the sarva dharma prar­thana held after the formal inauguration ceremony of Parliament, there was no mistaking the Hindu overtones of the event. How enormous the developments actually are for the nation and its people, steeped in centuries of rich tradition, becomes apparent when juxtaposed against the subterfuge adopted by Nehru.

Nehru was opposed to the idea of the reconstruction of the sacred Somnath temple destroyed several times by Muslim invaders and rulers. In 1026 CE, Mahmud of Ghazni plundered the temple. Then came Alauddin Khilji. And then Aurangzeb. But this ap­pears to have had little impact on India’s first prime minister who seemed busy overcompensating for a sense of cultural inferior­ity fostered by his Western worldview and his ‘Idea of India’. In his Pilgrimage to Freedom, KM Munshi wrote that after a Cabinet meeting in early 1951, Nehru called him to say, “I do not like your trying to restore the Somnath shrine. It is Hindu revivalism.” Munshi, then the food and agriculture minister, wrote to the prime minister in reply: “Yesterday, you referred to Hindu reviv­alism. You pointedly referred to me in the Cabinet as connected with the shrine at Somnath. I am glad you did so; for I do not want to keep back any part of my views or activities. I can assure you that the ‘Collective Subconscious’ of India today is happier with the scheme of reconstruction of Somnath… than with many other things that we have done and are doing.”

Nehru was not happy. Writing to President Rajendra Prasad, he asked him to reconsider his decision to inaugurate the temple. He wrote: “I confess I do not like the idea of you associating your­self with a spectacular opening of the Somnath temple. This is not merely visiting a temple but rather participating in a significant function which unfortunately has a number of implications.” Nehru stayed away from the opening of the Somnath temple. Had Sardar Patel and KM Munshi not persisted, the reconstruction proj­ect would probably never have taken off.

MODI, A PROUD Hindu, publicly laid the founda­tion of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. In October 2022, he inaugurated the `350-crore Mahakal Lok Corridor in Ujjain, as part of his untiring drive to return Hindu temples to their past glory and to the centre of India’s cultural traditions. Since taking office in 2014, he has overseen several restoration projects, such as the Kashi Vishwanath Dham and the Somnath temple. The list is long. But all of these would have fallen in the category of the ‘revivalism’ that Nehru so reviled.

Modi’s celebration of the Hindu way and the pride he takes in the conception and completion of Hindu projects have brought about a change—a veritable transformation in the collective mindset of the people. So much so, that the resurgence of the Hindu factor cannot be overlooked by anyone across the po­litical spectrum, least of all by the Congress leadership. This is evident from the temple runs made by members of the Gandhi family during recent electoral outings. Even now, while Congress sought to dispute the account of the Sengol, it is compelled to nuance its position by only questioning the accounts involving Rajaji but not the need to install the Sengol (unlike leaders like Sitaram Yechury) in the new Parliament.

The political genius of Modi lies in that he successfully elevat­ed what was essentially an issue of the construction of a brick and mortar edifice for lawmakers to one involving the essentials of a new India and its historical and cultural traditions dating back thousands of years. It is no longer about the physical attributes of a building. It has become an issue of identity, of the soul of a country and its people. “There was a time when India was counted among the most prosperous and luxurious nations in the world. From India’s cities to palaces, from India’s temples to sculptures, India’s architecture proclaimed India’s expertise. From the town plan­ning of the Indus Civilisation to the Mauryan pillars and stupas, from the magnificent temples built by the Cholas to the reservoirs and large dams. India’s ingenuity amazed travellers from all over the world. But hundreds of years of slavery took away this pride from us. The New India of the 21st century, India full of high spirit, is now leaving behind the thinking of slavery. Today, India is once again turning that glorious stream of ancient times towards itself. And this new building of Parliament has become a living symbol of this effort,” Modi said in his address on May 28.

Except for the usual suspects, there is little heartbreak, as would have been the case only a decade earlier, over the devel­opments around the new Parliament. As a matter of fact, these developments have triggered a renewed sentiment of Hindu pride across the nation. Importantly, this has also greatly raised the stakes for the 2024 General Election. The next electoral battle will not just be about who will occupy the treasury benches of the new Parliament but also about the identity of the Indian nation and its people.

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