TalkPoint: After Lenin, who will BJP raze next? Nehru?

Graphic by Siddhant Gupta.

In an outburst of post-poll violence, BJP supporters have razed Vladimir Lenin’s statue in South Tripura using bulldozers. Crowds also attacked CPM offices in Agartala and elsewhere.

ThePrint asks: After Lenin, who will BJP raze next? Nehru?

What the people did in Tripura is actually a form of a resistance and not vandalism

Rajat Sethi
Political advisor to the Manipur Chief Minister

The incident in question was a spontaneous reaction of the people of Tripura. They have seen oppression for over three decades from the cadre and the goons of the communist regime. The Lenin statue was the face of a totalitarian and oppressive regime. Lenin, Marx, Stalin statues are not just littered across the heart of Belonia, but across Tripura.

What the people did is actually a form of a resistance and not vandalism.

It is ironic when students guided by a particular ideology hold the vice-chancellor hostage in JNU, news channels call it resistance. They are actually hurting people.

The people of Tripura have faced mayhem at the hands of the communist regime. Tribal women have been raped and murdered. There was recently a case where CPI(M)-supporting in-laws killed a tribal woman, just because she voted for the BJP.

The Left has unleashed enough ideological vandalism and has no right to take the moral high ground. Veer Savarkar’s photograph from the Parliament was removed because of them. They tried to erase Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name from many documents. Moreover, when they came to power for the first time, they desecrated statues of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

The Left has choked free expression in Tripura. This is the first time that the people have been able to breathe freely. They can take a call on the politics of their own liking. They may not have expressed themselves in a very refined manner, like by writing an article, but their means of expression is as raw as it gets.

No BJP leader was leading this march. It was spontaneous. It provided catharsis to the people who have lived in a state of fear for decades. People in TV studios can’t understand that fear; they don’t know what it feels like to be liberated.

I’m neither condoning nor condemning it. If I had to express myself, I would perhaps write an article. But not everyone has that kind of access.

Yes, these people are BJP supporters. There are at least ten lakh of them in Tripura. But what has happened is a manifestation of people’s anger. The CPI(M) must introspect.

(As told to Deeksha Bhardwaj)

Does BJP’s victory in Tripura mean they burn other peoples’ houses?

Jitendra Chaudhury
Member of Parliament, East Tripura, CPI(M)

Chants of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ echoed as BJP workers vandalised Lenin’s statue in Tripura. Ram Madhav has tweeted that this is happening in Tripura and not in Russia, to imply that there is nothing unusual or wrong about it. Even Tripura’s governor has said that with changing governments, statues change too.

BJP leaders and RSS ideologues are taking this country down the wrong road. This is highly unfortunate. One wonders if this country is being ruled by followers of the Indian Constitution, or of Nazism?

Today they have destroyed Lenin’s statue; tomorrow it will be Mahatma Gandhi’s. Theirs is the ideology of Nathuram Godse. The razing of the statue was an inevitable outcome of their political philosophy. The goons of the BJP/RSS care nothing for the values of civility in a democracy.

What they have done is not a threat against the Left in Tripura; it is an open threat to democracy, a threat to the Constitution of India, to our secularism and the values that defined our freedom struggle.

They have won an election here, yes. But does victory mean you attack other people’s houses? There are so many political parties in the country; there have several elections, but no one has done anything like this.

Leaders like Lenin and Mahatma Gandhi have inspired generations. What has happened here is a symptom of fascism. It should set the alarm bells ringing.

Pulling down Lenin’s statue reflects the hatred that underlines the BJP’s ideology

Ashutosh
Spokesperson, Aam Aadmi Party

The razing of Lenin’s statue is not only painful, but also shameful for the Indian democracy. It is a reflection of the hatred and intolerance that underline the ideology of the RSS/BJP. It also underlines the lumpenisation of the Indian polity and society. The RSS inherently hates the Left because it believes that it is inspired by a foreign ideology and serves the interests of foreign forces. The RSS’s second chief, M.S. Golwalkar, had written in his book that the Left was one of the three enemies of India along with Muslims and Christians.

The attack on JNU and Left-leaning historians just after the BJP assumed office at the Centre was an indication. When the ‘azadi’ video went public, the RSS/BJP wasted no time to portray JNU as a den of anti-nationals harbouring terrorists. Similarly, their student wing attacked the students of West Bengal’s Jadavpur University and Delhi’s Ramjas College. They not only want to break the back of the communist movement in India, but also want to topple the Left’s ideological hegemony in academia.

The RSS is of the considered opinion that Nehru was also influenced by Left learnings during his student days in Britain. It believes Nehru was a disaster as India’s first Prime Minster on account of his Kashmir and China policy, and also blames him for the Partition. It also hates Nehru for his secular credentials, which they call minority appeasement. In their world view, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel would have been a better PM. But the RSS’s real reason for hatred towards Nehru lies somewhere else. The RSS knows that unless Nehru and his thought process are discredited, it will be difficult for them to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra. Nehru is the greatest stumbling block in their pursuit. Nehru and his liberal thinking dominate India’s thought process. And as long as that thought process survives, a Hindu Rashtra is a distant dream. They would certainly like to raze Nehru’s statue, but they are aware of the fact that it might boomerang. So they would like to wait.

Not just pulling down Lenin’s statue, BJP workers also locked many clubs in Tripura

Gautam Chakma
Associate Professor, Political Science, Tripura University

Although the destruction of symbols and values of rival groups is not new in human history, the razing of Lenin’s statue within 24 hours of BJP marking a landslide victory in Tripura is quite a new political culture. The people of Tripura have not witnessed such a thing since Independence. Not only that, many clubs in the state have now been locked by the BJP. Many BJP supporters are themselves surprised.

It appears that the clash for political power is being followed by a clash of values. It is a fact that during the long rule of the Left Front government, many community halls, streets etc. were named after Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, just as the UPA’s tenure at the Centre saw a similar exercise in honour of Nehru and Gandhi. This clearly shows the rise of intolerance in the country.

We have seen in UP how Mayawati named things after Ambedkar. I think we have learnt it from history. When the Mughals came to India, they destroyed Hindu and other religious shrines. Before that, the Hindu rulers destroyed Buddhist monasteries. This is probably an inherent human trait.

Unless the BJP fails to realise that it has come to power in Tripura with tribal votes, they should start naming things after the state’s tribal leaders. My final comment is: this practice is not likely to stop. It has a long historical legacy.

The pulling down of the Lenin statue is merely a symbolic act 

Ruhi Tewari
Associate Editor, ThePrint

At the very outset, it is important to distinguish between what the BJP does as a party with conscious decisions from the top, and what is done by unruly party workers emboldened by power. The absolutely condemnable and frankly, silly, tearing down of Lenin’s statue in Tripura falls in the latter category.

Red fortresses seemed impenetrable to the saffron army not so long ago. But the BJP’s extraordinary victory in Tripura changed this. What happened on Monday was a venting of decades-long hatred of Left politics harboured by the Right, combined with intolerance for the ‘other’, a feature common across different political mindsets today.

However, this is not to say the BJP, since coming to power, hasn’t done its bit in systematically using its mandate to re-write history. It has attempted to create a new narrative and wipe out the old one, represented by the Left worldview. It has consciously tried to sideline Congress idols, including former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, while propping up its ‘own’ like Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Madan Mohan Malaviya.

In a small, but telling, instance of this drive, the rural housing scheme ‘Indira Awaas Yojana’ (named after Congress leader and former PM Indira Gandhi) was renamed more generically the ‘PM Awaas Yojana’. The BJP’s justification, of course, has been that the Congress had six decades to leave its stamp everywhere and now is its turn to do so.

The bringing down of Lenin’s statue is an act of physical vandalism, but merely symbolic. However, the BJP leadership’s approach as the party in power will not be to indulge in such hooliganism that can only yield symbolic results. The ‘razing’ will be less physical but deeper, more tangible and systemic. And yes, no point in singling out the BJP. This has been and will be the template for a party in power in a democratic, diverse yet surprisingly sectarian country like ours.

Compiled by Deeksha Bhardwaj, Journalist at ThePrint.