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28/06/24 06:46 AM IST

Sengol: Civilisational symbol or ‘raja ka danda’

In News
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi ceremonially installed the Sengol — the “sceptre of righteousness”, an ancient South Indian symbol of dharmic kingship — near the Speaker’s chair in India’s new Parliament building.
About Sengol
  • A sengol — or chenkol — is a royal sceptre, signifying kingship, righteousness, justice, and authority, among other qualities linked to the correct wielding of power.
  • Its origins lie in Tamil Nadu, and it served as a kingly emblem. Among the Madurai Nayakas, for example, the sengol was placed before the goddess Meenakshi in the great temple on important occasions, and then transferred to the throne room, representing the king’s role as a divine agent.
  • It was also, therefore, a legitimising instrument: the Sethupatis of Ramnad, for instance, when they first attained kingly status in the seventeenth century acquired a ritually sanctified sengol from priests of the Rameswaram temple.
  • It marked the ruler’s accountability to the deity in the exercise of power, as well as his graduation from chiefly status to a more exalted kingly plane.
  • As such, the sengol may be described, in its historical context, as a symbol of dharmic kingship.
Significance
  • The new parliament is a monument meant to mark a break with the past. It is not just a utilitarian building.
  • The erection of statues, the construction of the Ram temple, and such projects supported and/ or encouraged by the government are a reorientation of the national narrative — a narrative which, for much of its post-1947 history, was dominated by a different set of values, parties, and players.
  • The Prime Minister is not appealing to constitutional norms but to a cultural — or some might say, a civilisational — legitimacy. The placement of the sengol near the Speaker’s chair is to give that chair — which derived meaning so far via Western parliamentary conventions that we adopted and adapted — a more visibly Hindu quality and casing.
  • The Prime Minister and his supporters will see it as an act of cultural renascence; others will bewail the political Hinduisation of one more national symbol.
Source- Indian Express

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