New Delhi, July 17
Animated or aggressive? Debate over the emblem atop the new Parliament building rages with several historians dismayed that the essence of the original “protective” Ashokan lions has been effaced while others say the differences are minuscule and no two pieces of art can be identical.
India’s emblematic lions have been under a close scanner since Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week unveiled the cast of the national emblem. The discourse it evoked was immediate and polarised.
According to several historians, including Harbans Mukhia, Rajmohan Gandhi, Kunal Chakrabarti and Nayanjot Lahiri, the ‘new lions’ are “dissimilar” when compared to the Ashokan specimens and don’t exude the same calm and peace.
Fellow historian Paromita Das Gupta disagreed, arguing that the lions in the recent cast look bigger and more animated, true to the animal’s character.
“The artists who created them are more than 2,500 years apart, hence the craftsmanship will understandably differ. It cannot be a carbon copy as no two works of art are identical,” the assistant professor at Hyderabad’s Mahindra University told PTI.
The differences between the new emblem and the original Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath are very much visible, said Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian currently teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Anyone taking even a quick look at the relevant photographs can notice a difference,” Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson told
