The rediscovery of a special gift for Nehru from Madras: Vummidi family to be honoured for Sengol

On Wednesday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have the Sengol installed in the Lok Sabha, near the Speaker’s podium. It will also be on display during significant national holidays.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is seen holding the Sengol. (HANDOUT PHOTO VIA MHA/PTI)

Historical significance

Until a piece about the Sengol appeared in a Tamil magazine in 2018, the current generation of the Vummidi family had no idea about its historical significance.

Udaykumar said, “The article included a picture of the Sengol and gave our family credit for its creation. It mentioned my grandfather’s name, Vummidi Anjalelu Chetty, who passed away in the 1960s, and described my family as a traditional family of goldsmiths.”

After reading the article, Udaykumar said he asked his father about the Sengol. In 1947, Ethiraj, then 22, was a contributing member of the family businesses. However, his father could not recall any details.

“He said he couldn’t remember what he had done at the time but had a hazy memory of working on something similar. However, one of our relatives started looking for the Sengol and began contacting various agencies before he learned that the Allahabad Museum had something similar to what we were looking for,” Udaykumar said.

At the museum, the Sengol had been labelled as Nehru’s “golden walking stick”.

Arun Kumar, a member of the family’s marketing team, was sent to the Allahabad Museum. “At the museum, he was allowed to examine the Sengol closely. Based on the picture we already had from the magazine, Kumar was able to confirm that there were some Tamil letters on the Sengol. We verified that it was the same as what my father and grandfather made when India gained freedom,” said Udaykumar.

He added that the family wanted specifics of the Sengol to create a replica “to maintain at our home… That was the whole purpose of this search”. Around the same time, an RSS ideologue who is also a family friend became interested in the Sengol.

“S Gurumurthy’s Thuglak (a Tamil magazine) also published a piece on the Sengol around the same time. He began a parallel investigation to learn more about Sengol’s past. He was the one who contacted the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam,” Udaykumar said.

The Adheenam, a Hindu mutt in Tamil Nadu, had commissioned Vummidi Bangaru Jewellers to create the Sengol, according to a Government of India website. To a query, a top source at the mutt said it was being run by Guru Mahasannidhanam Sri La Sri Ambalavana Desika Swami, the twentieth seer, at the time.

Special gesture

“We do not have the precise details on commissioning it or the cost incurred in its making, except to say that it was a special gift and a gesture we sent from Tamil Nadu during Independence, like similar gestures shown by states and kingdoms across India,” the source added.

According to the Vummidi family, as quoted on the government website, the Adheenam gave it the task of designing the Sengol. Made of gold-plated silver, about 10 gold craftspersons worked on it for 10-15 days, added the website.

After they managed to confirm that the Sengol was in Allahabad and Kumar returned with more information and pictures, Udaykumar said his father was able to recall a few more details.

“We sat with him once again. He remembered a little more after seeing Nandi (the divine bull) perched atop the Sengol. He said there were confusions about Nandi’s proportions and that they travelled all the way to Kumbakonam for references on Nandi before settling on the final design. He remembered that they used a design sent by the Adheenam for the Sengol,” Udaykumar said.

According to Ethiraj, said Udaykumar, the surmounted Nandi denotes stability and justice. Motifs like wheat and rice grains, indicating the prosperity of agriculture, and Goddess Lakshmi, representing wealth, were carved on the remaining parts of the Sengol. “My father said it was a symbolic statement — that the person who holds the Sengol will also possess all of these things,” he said.

He added that neither his father, nor documents with the family and the Adheenam had proof or information regarding the cost or material used in the creation of the Sengol.

“We don’t have this information. My father has no recollection of these specifics either. Our home, workshop and showroom were all located at the same location back then — on Govindappa Street in Sowcarpet. More than 25 people worked for us. My uncle was barely 12 years old at the time. So he was unable to recall any details. The only thing my family remembers is that before the Sengol was sent to Delhi, people came to see it,” Udaykumar said.

The sceptre is mentioned in an article on India’s independence in Time Magazine’s issue dated August 25, 1947. Under the subheading, ‘Blessing with Ashes’, the article states that even an agnostic like Nehru, as he was about to become India’s first Prime Minister, “fell into the religious spirit”.

The article, titled ‘INDIA: Oh Lovely Dawn’, vividly described how Sanyasis “from Tamil Nadu visited Nehru’s house on the eve of independence” and “sprinkled Nehru with holy water from Tanjore and drew a streak in sacred ash across Nehru’s forehead”. It added that the seer from Tamil Nadu gave Nehru the golden sceptre — described in the article as the “scepter of gold, five feet long, two inches thick” — after wrapping him in the pithambaram “(cloth of God), a costly silk fabric with patterns of golden thread”. Additionally, the article said he gave Nehru some cooked rice that had just been flown to Delhi after being offered that very morning to the dancing god Nataraja in south India.

Lack of documentary evidence

According to a document released by the government, when Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, asked Nehru if there was a ceremony that should be followed to symbolise the transfer of power from the British to the newly independent nation, the soon-to-be Prime Minister consulted C Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General, who suggested a Chola dynasty tradition — where the transfer of power from one king to the other was sanctified and blessed by high priests.

“The symbol (for the transfer of power) used was the handover of the ‘Sengol’ from one King to his successor,” says the document.
On Friday, Congress communications head tweeted there was no documented evidence of Lord Mountbatten, Rajagopalchari and Nehru describing the ‘Sengol’ as a symbol of the transfer of power by the British to India.

The government hit back, with Amit Shah asking why the party “hates Indian traditions and culture so much”.

“A sacred Sengol was given to Pandit Nehru by a holy Saivite Mutt from Tamil Nadu to symbolize India’s freedom but it was banished to a museum as a ‘walking stick’,” Shah tweeted.

Srila Sri Ambalavana Desika Paramacharya Swamigal, the leader of the Thiruvaduthurai Aadheenam, admitted to the lack of documentary evidence to arrive at a specific conclusion either way.

“These are all the stories we have heard from old people… What we know is that a Sengol was presented by the Aadheenam to Nehru when India got Independence.”

The book, Freedom at Midnight, authored by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, mentions how Tamil seers handed over the Sengol to Nehru on the eve of Independence. The book vividly details their procession in a 1937-model Ford taxi through Delhi on the evening of August 14, which “came to a stop in front of a simple bungalow at 17 York Road,” Nehru’s residence between 1946 and 1948, before moving to Teen Murti House. The 17 York Road is now called Motilal Nehru Marg.

“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 who was about to assume the leadership of a modern Indian nation,” says the book about Tamil seers meeting with Nehru at his residence.

The book also captures the moment when seers placed their sceptre in Nehru’s arms: “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 almost as if that proud rationalist had instinctively understood that in the awesome tasks awaiting him no possible source of aid, not even the occult that he so scornfully dismissed, was to be totally ignored.”