On May 28, 2023, New Delhi witnessed two contrasting scenes within a short distance of each other. While a new parliament building was being unveiled, police officers were manhandling some of India’s top female wrestlers who had been protesting against the president of the Wrestling Federation of India, Brijbhushan Sharan Singh, who had been accused of sexually abusing them and other women wrestlers. The wrestlers attempted to march peacefully towards the new parliament building but were blocked by Delhi police, who detained them and filed charges. Meanwhile, Singh, who is a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as a member of the same parliament, entered the new building triumphantly waving to the cameras.
The Delhi police department has repeatedly refused to register reports against leaders of the BJP when they have openly incited violence as well as against organisers or participants of assemblies calling for violence against Muslims. The bizarre and horrible scenes played out on that day in May reflect the behaviour of the Delhi police department, which reports to the central government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The inauguration ceremony of the new parliament building felt like the unveiling of a new republic with a majoritarian monarchical hue. Priests from Tamil Nadu were flown in on special planes to lead a ceremony that looked like the anointment of an emperor. Modi’s government claimed that the Hindu priests had handed over a golden sceptre called a sengol to Britain’s Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India who then handed it over to Nehru signifying the transfer of power from the British to Indians. According to the BJP government, the sengol represents the continuity of the divine power of ancient times, which was held by a succession of Hindu kingdoms on its behalf. The spectacle around the inauguration of the new parliament building was therefore meant to suggest the restoration of Hindu power.
Modi has been performing similar symbolic acts for the last eight years, effectively presenting himself as a new Hindu monarch even if elected through a democratic process. He conducts religious ceremonies and unveils temples in his official capacity. Modi has not hidden his contempt for the secular character of India. After his second election victory in 2019, he boasted before his party’s lawmakers that he had effectively banished the word secularism from India’s political discourse. The inauguration of the new parliament building was again used to give a Hindu colour to the highest seat of power in India.
Opposition parties had boycotted the ceremony, blaming the Modi government for trashing parliamentary norms and accusing it of violating constitutional principles. The president of India and the vice president were also kept out of it. The ceremony was played live by the country’s major TV media, largely blocking out the scenes of violence against wrestlers and their supporters.
The contrast between the scenes of female wrestlers being battered in the vicinity of the new building and the spectacle around the inauguration of the new parliament building represents the truth of what Modi calls “New India”. On the one hand, it involves using symbols like the sengol to try to usher in a Hindu nation. Yet, in reality, the scenes of female wrestlers being battered make it starkly clear that this nation can flourish only by stripping all citizens, including Hindus like the leading wrestlers, of their rights. What is being built is a state where no one can claim their rights. Those who try to will be suppressed.