Valson Thampu

Some are mystified, the rest intrigued, by the way Modi chose to inaugurate the New Parliament building. I belong to neither category. My calling is to reflect on events and motifs independently, and share the emerging insights. Why did Modi choose to have this inauguration saturated with monarchic nuances and ritualistic overtones?
Various explanations have been offered as to what its sub-text portends. That it signals a shift from democratic governance to monarchic rule. That it symbolises the inauguration of the Hindu Rashtra, wherein the will of the people will cease to be an electoral migraine in five–year cycles of wasteful electioneering. What I propose to do here is to read the event from a historico-biblical perspective, un-blinkered by stereotypes.
Since Modi has chosen to go back in time by several centuries to choreograph the symbolic flavour of his show-piece event, I go even farther back in time to decode its meaning. You could suspect, on the face of it, that what I suggest is far-fetched. But, have patience! Heed my argument all the way through, and then decide for yourself.
Recall the account, in the second chapter of Genesis, of the creation of Adam? God ‘shapes’ and ‘breathes’. It is not enough to shape Adam out of the dust of the earth. He has to be breathed into. Let us agree, for the time being, that creating Adam was, to God, an enterprise comparable in significance to creating the New Parliament is to Modi. Notwithstanding the pan-Indian economic distress that the COVID pandemic inflicted, Modi did not lack the massive means –in contrast to the lowly biblical ‘dust of the earth’- to shape his monumental landmark. If you extend this symbolic network further in biblical history, you will begin to see the massive metallic statue that Nebuchadnezzar created-
King Nebuchadnezzar made a gold statue ninety feet tall and nine feet wide and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Then he sent messages to the high officers, officials, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates, and all the provincial officials to come to the dedication of the statue he had set up. So all these officials came and stood before the statue King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. (Daniel 3:1-3)
Thousands of years ago, king Nebuchadnezzar was far more secular than Modi today is as the head of a secular-democratic government. He did not showcase a priestly menagerie on the occasion! But let that pass. I cite this analogue to suggest the possibility that the inauguration of the new building could have been imagined as the inauguration of a new edition of the Modi regime -Modi 3.0- just as Nebuchadnezzar’s massive statue was much more than a statuary extravaganza.
Perhaps the aspect of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue more directly pertinent to the present context is that, for all its gaudy impressiveness, the statue was incomplete in itself. It was like Adam, without his soul. A statue is nothing, unless it is worshipped. People’s worship vis-a-vis the statue parallels God’s breath vis-a-vis Adam. The shift from the breath of God to the breath of the masses is as striking as it is significant.
The problem with our Opposition Parties is that they are poor readers of symbols. Had they read the inauguration of the Parliament symbolically, they would have appreciated, not bemoaned, the exclusion of the President of India from the occasion. Obliging President Murmu to ‘grace the occasion’ would have been a terrible disservice to the office of the President. Her presence would have disturbed the envisaged symbolic integrity of the event. Contrary to what others maintain on the matter, I commend Modi on his good sense in this regard.
Now we reach the core of the matter. The inauguration of the New Parliament must be read in its two-fold dimension. The first pertains to the impressive display of what Modi can. He can rival the imperial splendour of the British Raj. And why not?
But, there is this other dimension too, which is, alas, a trifle unflattering. Modi does not have, in himself, or in the resources he commands, what it takes to imbue this mascot of New India with something higher than matter. Modi may showcase himself as the ‘pujari-Prime Minister’, much like Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s choosing to be the ‘poet-Prime Minister’. But, he doesn’t have it in him to breathe a new soul in to the New India of his dreams. He has to borrow that soul-resource from some other source, much like Nebuchadnezzar needing the people’s adoration to make the statue more than a pile of metal. If it not to be borrowed from the people, from where else?
Thank Goodness for the Sengol (on, Chenkol) Who played Rajagopalachari in the resurfacing of this Chola symbol of authority in the present instance, we know not. But it is admittedly a borrowed idea. (Imagine the North borrowing from the South!) In that sense, it amounts also to a covert confession of the inadequacy of the best of material resources. The physical is a caricature of itself without the metaphysical. What is a body without a soul? So also, what is an impressive structure without something symbolic –something spiritual- to breathe a soul into it? At this point all secular pretensions to divinity, no matter by whom, falter and fumble.
So, there could as well be this other twist in the tale waiting in the womb of time. Can a material object, a Sengol, a lifeless object, no matter how electrified with invocations and prostrations, breathe a soul into the brick and mortar structure of the new temple of Indian polity? The answer looms large on the wider canvas of history, dotted with shadows of the Towers of Babel that men have wrought in the past, as much in desperation as in hubris.