Union home minister Amit Shah announced that a Sengol (sceptre), which he claims was presented by the last viceroy of British India Lord Mountbatten to Jawaharlal Nehru on August 14, 1947 to mark the transfer of power from Britain to India, will be placed in the new parliament building that Prime Minister Modi will inaugurate on Sunday, May 28.
Shah’s claim has been questioned for lacking credible evidence in its support. It may be mentioned that the Sengol was the golden sceptre handed over to a king in Tamil Nadu by a God or Goddess for ruling the subjects and ensuring justice in their name. Shah provided an account stating that at the time of independence in August 1947, Mountbatten asked Nehru if any rituals were being followed in India for the transfer of power. Nehru then turned to Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, popularly known as Rajaji, who referred to the tradition that kings in Tamil Nadu followed for transferring power by handing over the Sengol.
Shah maintained that Rajaji arranged for a Sengol from Tamil Nadu, which Mountbatten handed over to Nehru to signify the transfer of power from Britain to India. So far, he has not authenticated his claim with the support of any credible historical documents.
Constituent assembly and the transfer of power
Such a claim is completely contrary to the constituent assembly’s proceedings at midnight on August 14, 1947, when India became independent. Those proceedings illuminatingly reveal that the assembly adopted a motion moved by its president Rajendra Prasad for the transfer of power. Its text is worth quoting:
“… it should be intimated to the viceroy that (1) the constituent assembly of India has assumed power for the governance of India, and (2) the constituent assembly of India has endorsed the recommendation that Lord Mountbatten be Governor-General of India from the August 15, 1947, and that this message be conveyed forthwith to Lord Mountbatten by the president and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.”
The adoption of that historic motion was a sequel to the sanctioning of the British parliament for transfer of power by enacting the Indian Independence Bill, 1947, which received royal assent on July 18, 1947 and became an Act. Immediately after that motion was adopted, Prasad and Nehru went to Mountbatten and informed him about the assembly’s decision to assume power to govern India. That constituted the real transfer of power, and there was no other way in which power was transferred.
Therefore, Amit Shah’s claim is a subversion of the facts of history that are recorded in the constituent assembly’s debates and its legislative intent. All those details were reported in The Hindu on August 15, 1947. It also reported that after announcing the assumption of power by the assembly, Nehru retired to an ante-room where a brief religious ceremony was held, and that a priest blessed Nehru and his mission.
There was no record or any evidence whatsoever of Mountbatten handing over the Sengol to Nehru to mark the transfer of power.
Even eminent biographer of Rajaji and his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, expressed bewilderment at Shah’s claim confessed with all consternation that he had heard about the Sengol for the first time when Shah made his announcement.
The compiler of Nehru’s selected works, professor Madhavan Palat, asserted that had such a landmark event taken place marking the transfer of power, Nehru would have recorded it in his writings, and the media would have widely and prominently covered it.
Now that the hollowness of Shah’s claim has been brought to the limelight, it is imperative to examine the correctness of placing the Sengol in the new parliament building and that too near the Lok Sabha speaker’s chair.
The Sengol is rooted in the divine right theory
The Sengol is associated with the divine right theory of power and sovereignty, and such a theory has been long rejected and buried in democratic India. In Madurai’s Meenakshi temple, an oil painting shows the Goddess Meenakshi presenting a Sengol to the king of Madurai, and thereby conveying the message that the king would rule in Her name and do justice to his subjects.
There is a mural in the 17th-century Ramalinga Vilasam Palace of Ramanathapuram, where the Goddess Rajarajeshwari is shown handing over the Sengol to the king (the sethupathi, who basically ruled Ramanathapuram under the suzerainty of the rulers of Madurai).
The essence of it was that the king derived power not from the people, but from the Goddess. It depicted nothing but the divine right of kingship and firmly symbolised that all power, authority and sovereignty flowed from the Goddess. As in real life, a Goddess could not hand over the Sengol, so the brahmin priest in the ruler’s court handed it over to him.
Thus, the handing over of the Sengol is rooted in the divine right theory of power and in Brahmanical supremacy. It is, therefore, completely antithetical to democracy and the ideals of equality, equal opportunity and people as the source of power and authority.
Nehru was against the divine right theory
Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution in the constituent assembly on December 13, 1946, and he was shocked when some members of the assembly raised objections to a portion of it that said “sovereignty belongs to the people and rests with the people”.
Observing on January 22, 1947 in the assembly that “it is certainly a surprising objection”, Nehru sharply remarked:
“It may not be very surprising if those people who have lived in an atmosphere of medievalism do not give up their cherished illusions, but in the modern age how can a man believe for a moment in the divine and despotic rights of a human being?”
Asserting that the constituent assembly would never allow – and indeed repudiate – any notion entertained by some people that they would rule over human beings by special divine dispensation, he held that to be an “intolerable presumption”. It is hard to believe that Nehru, who rejected the divine right basis of power, authority and sovereignty in January 1947 would accept the Sengol in August that same year from Mountbatten.
He might have accepted the Sengol at his home, when some people who were visiting him possibly gave it to him out of sheer affection or admiration for his high stature and contributions India’s freedom. Because it was associated with the divine right theory of power and sovereignty, disregarding people as source of power, Nehru may have decided to keep it in a museum.
Sardar Patel’s rejection of the Travancore kingdom’s assertion
It is quite instructive to learn from the example of the Travancore Kingdom’s princely rulers who, in 1946, refused to join the Indian Union on the grounds that Hinduism and the Hindu God Padmanabhaswamy would be in danger if the kingdom become part of India.
They invoked the divine right theory of sovereignty to defend their decision and declare Travancore an independent country (strangely receiving recognition from Pakistan at that time). They asserted that the sovereignty of Travancore rested with Lord Padmanabha and He could not be subservient to the sovereignty of India. V.P. Menon mentioned in his book The Story of the Integration of Indian States that the Travancore maharaja’s devotion to Padmanabha bordered on fanaticism.
Former president K.R. Narayanan, in a speech delivered on August 14, 1998 on the occasion of unveiling a statue of Sardar Patel in parliament, made a poignant reference to that point and said:
When the dewan of Travancore, Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, held out the argument that no one could negotiate a merger of the state with India as Travancore was ruled “in the name and on behalf of the tutelary deity, Sri Padmanabha”, Sardar Patel snapped with a twinkle in his eye, “Is that so? Then please tell me how could Travancore’s rulers allow Lord Padmanabha to become subservient to the British crown?”
Parliament is not the place for the Sengol
In any case, the Sengol is associated with the divine right of kingship. We are a democracy and no God, Goddess or Brahmin presents power to the elected ruler – it is the people who by their votes give the mandate to elected rulers.
The Sengol must be returned to the museum, and the constitution of India should be the guiding, fundamental law for our parliament and the nation.
(S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan. Courtesy: The Wire.)
Sengol: Evidence Thin On Government’s Claims About the Sceptre
Pon Vasanth B.A.
A day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah addressed a press conference in Delhi explaining the importance of the sceptre (sengol) to be installed in the new Parliament building, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman addressed journalists in Chennai on May 25, explaining how it is a matter of pride for Tamil Nadu.
She reiterated that it was the ritual of handing over of this sceptre, made by the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam in Tamil Nadu, to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of Independence that actually symbolised and sanctified the “transfer of power” from the British to India.
The Frequently Asked Questions section in the website (www.sengol1947ignca.in) launched by the Union government says the handover of this sceptre was “the defining occasion that actually marked the transfer of power from British to Indian hands…The ‘order’ to rule India was thus received, suitably blessed”.
The government’s assertion is that Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, asked Nehru if there was any procedure to signify transfer of power. Nehru in turn consulted C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, who in turn had the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam prepare the sceptre, seen as the sacred symbol of power and just rule. Those who presented the sceptre were flown in a special plane to Delhi, the government said.
There is ample evidence that a delegation sent by Sri la Sri Ambalavana Pandarasannadhi Swamigal, the head of the Adheenam, presented the sceptre to Nehru, accompanied by the recital of hymns from Thevaram. However, evidence is thin on the government’s claim that this presenting of sceptre was treated by the leaders and the then government as the symbolic transfer of power.
When asked about the documentary evidence, Ms. Sitharaman said there were “as many documentary proof” as one wanted and they were included in the docket given to the reporters at the end of the press conference.
A perusal of these documents, however, did not establish the claims of the government. The documentary evidence included a list of references from books, articles, and reports in the media. It also included social media and blog posts from individuals.
The reports from Indian newspapers, including The Hindu, had briefly recorded the presentation of the sceptre. None spoke about it being a symbol of transfer of power or it being taken on the advice of Rajaji. Importantly, a picture carried in The Hindu showed the delegation at the Central Railway Station, Chennai, on August 11, 1947, before leaving for Delhi. This indicates the delegation had most likely travelled by train and not by a special plane.
Other evidence referred included an article in the Time magazine on August 25, 1947. Speaking on the happenings on August 14, 1947, it says, “From Tanjore in south India came two emissaries of Sri Amblavana Desigar [the head of Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam], head of a sannyasi order of Hindu ascetics. Sri Amblavana thought that Nehru, as first Indian head of a really Indian Government ought, like ancient Hindu kings, to receive the symbol of power and authority from Hindu holy men”. While it speaks about the head pontiff’s idea of the sceptre as symbol of power, it does not speak about Nehru reciprocating the same idea or seeing its presentation as the symbol of power transfer.
The book Freedom at Midnight, cited as evidence, also says something similar. “As once Hindu holy men had conferred upon ancient India’s kings their symbols of power, so the sannyasin had come to York Road to bestow their antique emblems of authority on the man [Nehru]… 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,” it says.
Other evidence cited included the excerpts from Ambedkar’s Thoughts on Linguistic States, Perry Anderson’s book The Indian Ideology, and Yasmin Khan’s Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, all of which were critical of certain religious rituals in which Nehru participated, but none about the use of sceptre as a symbol of power transfer.
Importantly, none of the evidence presented said the sceptre was first symbolically given to Mountbatten and taken back before being presented to Nehru, symbolising the transfer. The exception is the article that appeared in Thuglak magazine, written by its editor S. Gurumurthy in 2021. The article records everything the government has said as the version shared by Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi, the 68th head of Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Pitam, from his memory to a disciple in 1978.
The most ironic evidence presented in the docket was a blog post titled “WhatsApp History” written by famous Tamil writer Jeyamohan. In this post, Jeyamohan had in fact ridiculed this version of events as being based on forwards on social media. Stating that the sceptre was likely to be among the many presents sent from across the country during Independence, he, however, said it was a matter of pride for Tamils that the sceptre from the Saivite mutt also reached Nehru.
The document also mentioned the annual policy note prepared by Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department in Tamil Nadu for 2021-2022, stating the sceptre “signified the transfer of power”. Officials from the department could not clarify on the source for this statement when contacted on May 25. The reference has been removed from the department’s policy notes in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
(Courtesy: The Hindu.)
