Tag: statue vandalism

Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Statue Vandalised Again in Pakistan’s Lahore Fort

According to news reports, a teenager, identified as Zeeshan, is suspected to have broken an arm of the statue on December 12 and has since been arrested.

New Delhi: The statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh has been vandalised for the second time since it was placed at Pakistan’s Lahore Fort in June 2019 in commemoration of his 180th death anniversary.

As per a news report in The Dawn, a teenager, identified as Zeeshan, who is suspected to have broken an arm of the statue on December 12, has been arrested. As per Express Tribune, the teenager is a resident of Harbanspura in Lahore.

The Walled City of Lahore Authority told PTI, “The security guards deployed there arrested the boy and handed him over to the police. The suspect has been booked under sections 295, 295-A and 427 of the Pakistan Penal Code.”

The Dawn report said Zeeshan had told the police that the statue should not have been built “as he had committed atrocities against Muslims during his rule.” He is said to have been influenced by late Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who had preached hate against the 19th-century Sikh ruler. The Dawn said although he was influenced by Rizvi’s thoughts, “the colour of intolerance towards personalities of other religions have been tainting society since a long time and many academics and civil society activists have been uneasy about it.”

In August last year, soon after the Narendra Modi government removed the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, two men affiliated to Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan of Khadim Rizvi had struck the nine feet tall statue made of cold bronze with wooden rods, breaking one of its arms and damaging some other parts. In that incident, the attackers chanted slogans against the former ruler of Punjab while protesting against the Modi government’s decision.

Sikh historian and filmmaker Bobby Singh Bansal, through his London-based organisation, the S.K. Foundation, had funded the statue, and collaborated with the Walled City of Lahore Authority to install it with a gala event in June last year. The statue made by local artisans under the watch of the Fakir Khana Museum, shows the Maharaja sitting on a horse with a sword in hand.

Also read: Ranjit Singh’s Statue in Lahore Uproots the Colonial Narrative of Muslim-Sikh Strife

After Saturday’s incident, Bansal told The Dawn, “There has been so much apathy and mistrust over the Partition that it has caused misinformation and misunderstanding between Muslims and Sikhs as well as other religions.” He said, “It is sad that people target a monument without knowing the facts.”

Ruing about how Sikh history has never been taught in Pakistan’s schools, he said the Sikh chapter is a link to Punjab’s identity both culturally and politically. “Ranjit Singh had employed more Muslims and Hindus in his court than people of any other religion – there were hardly any Sikh nobles in the darbar – Sikhs were usually sent to guard the frontiers…Ranjit Singh had repaired and restored many mosques and the Sunehri Masjid was given gold and a facelift after he evicted occupying troops from it. He never forcibly converted anyone to any faith and even married a Muslim woman, Gul Begum.”

The news report said the act of vandalism was condemned by many on social media. “A Twitter user wrote: So a statue of Maharaja Ranjit Singh has again been vandalised for the second time in Lahore Fort. What’s different between those Pakistanis who support the act, and Modibhakts who call Aurangzeb, Alamgir and Tipur Sultan terrorists?”

Reacting to the news, Peter Jacob, Pakistan Minority Rights activist and chairperson of the People’s Commission for Minority Rights, called for a check into the “kind of intolerance that has seeped into society, which has also received impunity in public discourse.”

Thiruvalluvar’s Statue Vandalised Amidst Political Row Over Poet

The incident came hours after the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit triggered a controversy on social media after it tweeted a picture of Thiruvalluvar in saffron robes with rudraksh beads on his neck and arms.

New Delhi: Unidentified persons vandalised a statue of legendary poet Thiruvalluvar and smeared it with black paint and cow dung in the early hours of Monday, according to a report in News Minute.

After the desecration, which allegedly took place at midnight in Pillayarpatti, around six kilometres from Vallam in Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu, passersby notified police officials from the Vallam police station. The deputy superintendent of police of the Vallam division arranged for the statue to be cleaned and garlanded immediately and ordered a probe into the incident.

The deputy superintendent also told News Minute that police was investigating the issue. “We have not filed any FIR in this regard yet. The statue has been cleaned after the incident,” the deputy superintendent said.

The statue, installed by Valluvar Kula Sangam, was inaugurated in 2005 in Pillaiyarpatti.

In response to the vandalism of Thiruvalluvar’s statue, the leader of the opposition in Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin took to Twitter to condemn the desecration and said that the AIADMK government should be ashamed of itself for being unable to prevent such activities. Stalin also said that it has become a usual activity in the state to insult anybody who worked for the Tamils like Periyar and Thiruvalluvar.

The incident came hours after the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit triggered a controversy on social media after it tweeted a picture of Thiruvalluvar in saffron robes with rudraksh beads on his neck and arms.

Also read: Recent Spate of Statue Vandalism Gives Us a Perspective on Iconoclasm

The tweet prompted a backlash and the BJP was accused of attempting to ‘saffronise’ the Tamil poet. Several members of the DMK contended the BJP’s claim that Thiruvalluvar was a Hindu saint was therefore dressed in orange robes and instead pointed out Thiruvalluvar wore white robes.

MDMK founder Vaiko also condemned the BJP’s attempt to give the Tamil saint poet a saffron tint. In a statement on Monday, Vaiko said: “If the BJP does not stop it’s act, the people of Tamil Nadu would give a fitting reply.”

Previously in 2018, members of the BJP tore down a statue of Lenin in Tripura while another statue of Dravidian movement leader Periyar E.V. Ramasamy was vandalised after the BJP’s national general secretary said on Facebook: “Who is Lenin? What is the relevance he holds in India? What is the link between communism and India? Lenin’s statues were destroyed in Tripura, tomorrow, in Tamil Nadu, casteist Periyar’s statues will be destroyed.”

Earlier this year in May, the TMC accused “BJP goons” of vandalising the statue of social reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.

The vandalism of Thiruvalluvar’s statue sparked protests across the district with students of Tamil University in Thanjavur sitting on protest in front of the university, demanding that the police arrest the miscreants at the earliest.

The House Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lived in Before he Became Lenin

The Russian Leader, whose 148th birth anniversary falls on April 22, lived in the Kazan house only briefly. But those few months helped shape his world view.

TV visuals of Lenin statues being taken down in Tripura reminded me that we saw more Lenin statutes standing during our three weeks in Russia than we had expected. He was there in every town or city we went to. Even the pretty little town of Vladimir, its population no more than 350,000 had Lenin standing in its leafy Cathedral Square, overlooking the magnificent Assumption Cathedral. Neither Vladimir Putin, nor even Boris Yeltsin, managed to banish Lenin from the Russian cityscape fully. (It is another matter, though, that Lenin himself would have squirmed at the sight of his own statues.)

But does Lenin still figure on the Russian mindscape? We started having our doubts almost as soon as we checked into our hotel in Kazan, our first port of call. The friendly lady at the hotel reception had not heard of the Lenin House museum that we knew was no more than a couple of kilometres from there. Nor had her chirpy  friend who offered to call the museum on the phone when I said I had both the address and the number. It seems the phone rang, but no one took the call. ‘Must be closed’, she said cheerfully.

So, the following day, we were on our own as we tried to reach the museum, truly so because the Google map was not working on my phone, and my Russian was limited to Spaseebo, Eezveenete and Prasteete. City map in hand, we went round endless circles, asked no fewer than ten passers-by, nearly got our passports impounded by a burly policeman whom we had made the mistake of asking the way, and had all but given up when we were accosted by two strapping young students of Kazan University who took charge of our affairs without a moment’s hesitation. One of them was from Moscow while his friend was from Kazakhstan. Neither spoke English, but a combination of the Google translator and the Google map – to which both had access—was very reassuring.

But the museum proved to be a tough nut yet. So many times, we seemed to be so very near it, only to be newly disappointed each time. Meanwhile, our Google conversation was proceeding apace: why were we in Russia; was India a rich country; given an opportunity, which country would we like to settle in; why in India and not the US…… Engrossed in the conversation, our young friends once went around a whole park, the Google map steady in one’s hand, unable to find an exit from the park to the side of the Ulitsa Ulyanova-Lenina that we expected to reach.

A full 40 minutes later, huffing and puffing, we spotted the museum. Our friends were quite as glad as us. Now that they had located the place, and since they now knew that Lenin, too, had once been a student of their university, they wanted to come back some day to take a look at the museum. After a round of warm handshakes, they took their leave, two young men from what once was the Soviet Union that Lenin had helped found, nearly completely unaware of who he was.

We found the main gate to the premises locked. Three ladies sat on cane chairs in the garden patch, talking among themselves. Seeing us, one of them came near the gate. Sorry, but the museum was not open to visitors that day, as the place was being cleaned up, and could we please come back the next day? In our broken Russian, we pleaded with her. We had come all the way from India to Kazan, had so much hoped to see the museum, and the next day we were going to Bolgar. Could something be done, please?

She went back to her friends, had a quick chat, and came back to usher us in. She was sorry that the English-speaking guide was away, though, and she only would take us around, if that was alright with us. Our faces must have told her how grateful we felt, for she beamed with pleasure. Indian visitors were so rare, she said, although they received many from China.

The museum in Kazan gives a feel of the place and time that helped shape the main protagonist of one of history’s most dramatic  episodes – the October Revolution. Credit: Lenin Museum website

58, Ulyanov-Lenin Street is a two-storey wooden house with a sloping white roof standing on a sprawling garden estate. The ground floor has a spacious hallway, a dining room, and two kitchens, while the upper floor has a large living room, three bedrooms and a closet. When Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, moved into this comfortable house with her five children (Anna, Vladimir, Olga, Dmitry and Maria) and the family nanny in September 1888, she must have looked forward to a period of calm and stability  after a tumultuous two years had turned the family upside down.

In January, 1886, her husband, the distinguished academician Ilyia Nikolayevich Ulyanov, had died of a sudden brain haemorrhage when only 54. The following year Alexander, the second-born and an exceptionally gifted child then studying at St Petersburg University, was arrested by the Tsar’s police in connection with a student group’s plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III, tried for sedition, and executed on May 8, 1887 at Schlisselburg on Lake Ladoga.  He had just turned 21.

Later the same year, Vladimir, a brilliant student and keen sportsman, graduated from the formidable Simbirsk Gymnasium with a gold medal, came to Kazan and enrolled at the university’s celebrated Law Faculty, staying in a rented apartment near the city centre. He soon got involved in the students’ council, led a protest march against the university’s decision not to allow the formation of a student society, and was expelled on December 4, 1887, briefly imprisoned, and ordered out of Kazan. He was allowed to return to Kazan from his exile in nearby Kokushkino in September 1888 but remained barred from resuming his studies in Kazan. The mother, hoping that things would settle down some day soon, moved over to Kazan with the rest of the family from Simbirsk. That was when this spacious house became  home to the Ulyanovs. Vladimir was 18 then.

Vladimir, a brilliant student and keen sportsman, graduated from Simbirsk Gymnasium with a gold medal, came to Kazan and enrolled at the university’s celebrated Law Faculty. ,Credit:: Wikimedia Commons

Maria Alexandrovna’s hopes for a turnaround in the family’s fortunes were to remain unfulfilled, however. Vladimir had already cut his teeth on early socialist and narodnik/anarchist literature, started studying Russia’s agrarian problems, and was seeking to conceptualise a revolutionary path to ending autocracy while abjuring personal violence and terror. In exile at idyllic Kokushkino, he had read Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel, What is to be Done, a stirring work proposing the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on peasant communes and calling upon Russian intellectuals to blaze a trail to socialism for the country’s labouring masses. This book was to remain Vladimir’s life-long favourite, and for years he exhorted young revolutionaries to study Chernyshevsky in earnest.

Upon his return to Kazan, Vladimir discovered the young Nikolai Fedoseev’s socialist study circle and quickly became one of the circle’s most enthusiastic participants. It was here that he was acquainted with Karl Marx’s Das Capital. When, years later, the leader of the October Revolution was to pay homage to Fedoseev, the words Lenin chose clearly establish his personal debt to him: “Fedoseev played a very important role in the Volga area and in parts of Central Russia during that period, and the turn towards Marxism at that time was, undoubtedly, very largely due to the influence of this exceptionally talented, exceptionally devoted revolutionary”. Vladimir had not quite become a Marxist yet, but had already taken a big stride towards Marxism in early 1889.

There were enough reasons already for the mother to feel restive. Vladimir was clearly veering away from the path of respectable prosperity that Maria Alexandrovna wished for her extremely capable child to follow. The radicalism of Vladimir’s political views was soon an open secret and the Czar’s police was on his heels most of the time. Worried, Maria decided to move out of Kazan and into the relative obscurity of the village of Alakayevka, not far from Samara, where she bought a country estate and hoped–incredibly enough – to persuade the 19-year-old Vladimir to turn his energies to farming!

With this objective, the Ulyanovs moved out of their Kazan home in May 1889, having lived in that handsome house for no more than nine months.(The postscript to the Samara story: it took Maria all of three months to realise the hopelessness of her pursuit of happiness in the countryside. They moved to Samara town, where Vladimir promptly joined Alexi Sklyarenko’s socialist study group, embraced Marxism, and completed the first Russian language translation of The Communist Manifesto.)

Russian revolutionaries were all obliged to write and travel under several aliases, and the first time that Vladimir Ulyanov came close to using the name that the world knows him by was not until 10 years later, when he published his seminal work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), as ‘Vladimir Ilin’. Before that, he had been persuaded by his mother to take the law degree of St. Petersburg university as an external candidate  (sure enough, he got a first class honours degree), practiced as a barrister’s assistant in St. Petersburg for several years, travelled to Europe and met émigré Russian and other socialist leaders, married Nadezda Krupskaya, and served three years’ exile in Eastern Siberia after being convicted of the crime of starting a workers’ daily in the Russian capital.

The Kazan house museum was inaugurated on November 7, 1937, on the October Revolution’s 20th anniversary and 13 years after Lenin’s death. Dmitry and Maria, Lenin’s two youngest siblings still alive then, helped set it up by donating stuff used by the family in its Kazan days and reconstructing the original lay-out from memory as well as period photographs. Many pictures, books and periodicals, articles of daily use and objects referenced in contemporary literature have been put together by the curators over the years, too. A hectograph machine, similar to the one that the Fedoseev circle used for cyclostyling pamphlets and documents, is on display in the living room that also exhibits photographs and plaster busts/statuettes of the family, friends and Lenin’s comrades. The hallway on the ground-floor has a Lenin statue of exactly the same unimposing height as its subject – five feet five – while the one standing on a white pedestal in front of the house recalls photographs and statues seen elsewhere. One of the ground-floor kitchens was often used by Lenin as a makeshift bedroom: he carried a key to the door at the back by which he could enter the house late at night without waking up the household. In his bedroom upstairs, an overcoat hung from a hook on the wall and a tiny, green-top worktable with an ink-stand and a notepad gives a lived-in impression still. The telephone in an alcove in the passage-way had been part of the Ulyanov household in the Kazan days.

Ours was not a long tour, the museum library was shut, but our guide was effusively helpful – though she spoke in unmixed Russian even as her visitors struggled to find out just what she was saying. What did not help much either was that most of the notices and legends were only in Russian and Tatar. We were not greatly disconcerted, however, as we amply got what we had come looking for – a feel of the place and time that helped shape the main protagonist of one of history’s most dramatic  episodes – the October Revolution. The lady thrust the visitors’ book in my hands at the end, and I noticed that most recent visitors seemed indeed to have Chinese names.

I started here by talking about the Tripura vandals. Kazan also saw some such rogues in action once. On April 26, 2009, four days after Lenin’s 139th birthday, his statue near the university was vandalised by goons who wanted all trace of him erased from the Tatarstan capital. Had he been alive, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov would have chortled in amusement.

              

Anjan Basu freelances as a literary critic and commentator. He can be reached at basuanjan52@gmail.com

 

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Statue Razed in Midst of Ram Navami Clashes in Bengal

West Bengal has been in the grip of communal riots which received a fillip after aggressive Ram Navami marches carried out by Hindutva groups.

New Delhi: Yet another incident of statue vandalism came to limelight from West Bengal, whch has been witnessing a series of communal riots over the past few days. It was reported that the Hindutva mobs which have been on a rampage since the Ram Navami processions destroyed a statue of India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Azad was a stalwart of the freedom struggle and a leading light of the Congress party.

The incident was first reported when images and videos of a mob bringing down his statue in Kankinara in North 24 Parganas district West Bengal were shared on Twitter.

Taking a leaf out of the statue vandalism that followed across India after BJP’s recent victory in Tripura, Hindutva mobs pulled down Azad’s statue as part of this violence that followed after the processions. In the previous incidents of statue demolitions, right-wing activists had targeted the statues of the world communist leader Lenin, Periyar, the south Indian icon of the struggle against caste oppression, and Dr B.R. Ambedkar, prime author of the Indian constitution and a leading Dalit icon.

There has also been one instance of a statue of Hindutva icon Syama Prasad Mookerjee being desecrated in West Bengal.

 

Local Trinamool Congress MLA Arjun Singh confirmed the toppling of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s statue. “Cops are investigating. I do not know anything more,” he told india.com.

The Indian Express reported that Singh and the Bhatpara municipality chairman-in-council Md. Maqsood Alam, too participated in the rally. But Alam said the procession was “hijacked by people with the wrong intentions”, who “were raising pro-BJP slogans”.

“We had clear instructions to take out a procession without arms. It was a huge crowd, people kept joining us. Who came with what arms is a matter of police investigation. If someone wants to join with a sword in hand, how can we throw him out? After all, it is a matter of belief. We tried our best to control the crowd,” Alam said.

The newspaper also quoted an eyewitness, who described the incident. “A group of people said something, which the Muslim community objected to. There was an argument between the two groups, followed by stone-pelting. It was a long procession, and half the people were already near the Kankinara rail bridge, which was recently renamed after Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. When these people heard about the incident near the Jama Masjid (where the first clash happened), they pulled down the statue of Maulana Azad. The mob also targeted vehicles parked in the area,” said the eyewitness.

One person, Maqsood Khan, was killed in the violence. “My husband heard about the tension in the area and went out to bring back our six-year-old daughter, who had gone out to buy chocolate. He didn’t come back. Somebody fired at him and he collapsed on the road. Some people rushed him to the police station, and then to hospital, where the doctors declared him dead,” Khan’s wife, Gulabsa Begum told the Indian Express.

“There was firing and Maqsood was hit by a bullet on his chest. I had a narrow escape, with a bullet injury on my leg,” Ashraf Ali, a resident of the area, added.

The BJP, however, held the Mamata Banerjee government responsible for failing to control a worsening law and order situation. Its state president Dilip Ghosh said that the police should have been prepared to handle the situation as it knew that Kankinara was a communally-sensitive organisation.

Similarly, the saffron party’s national secretary, Rahul Sinha said, “The TMC took out Ram Navami processions at various places, where people were carrying arms. Mamata Banerjee should take action against them. Swords have always been a part of Ram Navami celebrations. This has all been created by TMC to scare people in the name of Ram.”

West Bengal has been in the grip of communal riots which received a fillip after aggressive Ram Navami marches were carried out by Hindutva groups. At least five districts, including Burdwan, North 24 Parganas, Purulia, Midnapore, and Murshidabad, saw such religious processions – one of which (Midnapore) was led by the BJP state president Dilip Ghosh – which degenerated into a communal riot.

It was reported that the groups entered Muslim localities without police permission to deliberately inflame residents. Similar incidents were reported during Durga Puja and other Hindu festivals in 2017 and the year before.

While the statues of ideological opponents of the Sangh parivar were destroyed before irrespective of their religious affiliation, the targeting of Azad, a freedom fighter and moderate Congress leader, is the first to have clear communal overtones.  

As Statues of Icons Are Brought Down, Let’s Remember Why They’re Iconic

In UP’s Banda, almost every village and kasbah boasts of a “mandatory Ambedkar statue”. But what do they really signify?

“This is an attack on ideologies, that much should be clear,” R.P. Chaudhuri, manager, Sanghmitra Baudhvihar, Banda, said in response to the recent statue-demolishing spree the country has witnessed, and specifically on the B.R. Ambedkar busts that were vandalised in Meerut and Azamgarh. Starting with Lenin, moving to Ambedkar and with threats to Periyar thrown in, the recent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins in the northeast – a first in close to three decades – have been accompanied by the destruction of statues that were iconic to certain states, not to mention, as Chaudhuri puts it, ideologies.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a shock, given that other recent reports read like cautionary tales, wherein power is being used to re-write history, literally. This “moorti giraane ka silsila (statue-destroying spree)” was perhaps a predestined event.

In Banda, almost every village and kasbah boasts of a “mandatory Ambedkar statue”, as chief reporter Meera Devi calls it, standing in front of one such statue that adorns the yard of the community centre in Mohan Purva village. “But what of his ideals?” she had asked, in August 2017, in a bid to understand the place he occupies in contemporary rural India.

“Of course he was a great man, he has great importance for us,” Lallu Prasad Nishad, the district head of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Banda, the one party that lays claim to Ambedkar’s legacy in the state, had told us. “Not only for us actually, but he is a man of great importance for the entire country.” Sure enough, almost every BSP rally in Banda and around has invoked, cited and paid homages to Ambedkar, even bringing in local Indian Idol aspirants to belt out a few Babasaheb-inspired tunes.

Local advocate Jaykar condones the attacks, terming them unconstitutional and linking them to the “general upsurge in crime” in the state. “There is an act of violence, there is retaliation. Badle ki bhavna ko uksaya jar aha hai (The thirst for revenge is being fanned).”

His younger colleague Umlesh Bharti, however, sees them as a link in the chain of history, a narrative that has always been defined by the powerful, “As far as I know my history, when Babasaheb had spoken of social discrimination, and even after he had authored the constitution, his effigies were burnt. People who think that way have since been celebrating Ambedkar Jayanti and what not, but they don’t think twice about manufacturing these attacks. They serve as good distractions, and are part of obvious vote-bank games.”

Ram Sukhram, a Dalit resident of Devli village, Gazipur district, Banda, has no illusions about the politics behind it all, and the decades of systemic caste oppression. “Our voices need to be stifled for the status quo to be maintained. That is why these events happen.”

In 2017, Chaudhuri had said, “Governments and leaders get these statues installed in the name of honour and ideals, but that’s about it, isn’t it? Who is really following in his footsteps?” The lack of cleanliness and “rakh-rakhaav (caretaking)” at the Mohan Purva community centre – both in 2017 and on a recent visit – certainly indicated an apathy that is not merely passive.

In 2018, amidst all the well-meaning ire against the “bhakt-ist” mentality hell-bent on tearing down idols and ideologies, nobody seems to be posing certain important questions. When was the last time anyone paid their respects at this statue? When was the last time anyone deliberately applied Ambedkarite values to a life-decision? Or Lenin’s? Or Periyar’s, for that matter?

This is not to say these questions should dilute our focus from what’s at stake here. It should, all the more, urge us to rediscovering our own icons. It might just be the only option available to ensure that movements against equality do not gain ground, no matter who holds power. Fighting against “the very conscious narrative of asamaanta (inequality)”, as Chaudhuri puts is, is the answer.

Khabar Lahariya is a rural, video-first digital news organisation with an all-women network of reporters in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh.

BJP Doesn’t Support a Culture of Statue-Building: Sunil Deodhar

Ruling out reinstalling Lenin’s statue, Deodhar says his government will instead build a statue of Tripura’s last king.

New Delhi: A little more than a week after Lenin’s statue was pulled down in Tripura’s Belonia, Sunil Deodhar, state’s senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, has dismissed any possibility of installing a new statue of the communist leader and architect of the Russian revolution.

Deodhar is considered to be one of the primary movers behind the BJP victory in Tripura.

At a press conference, Deodhar said his party doesn’t believe in the culture of statues even though it does not support tearing down Lenin’s statue.  The money instead, emphasised the BJP leader, should be spent on providing good governance. “This is not our culture,” said the BJP leader. He went on to add, “Wherever such incidents have taken place, local authorities should take stern action against those involved… But we (BJP) do not believe in only building statues. Working for the people is more important than statues.”

Earlier, Belonia’s municipal authorities had been unsure about what to do with the damaged statue.  “We initially let the damaged statue lay there as it was since we were not sure about the mood of the people. We wanted to things to subside a bit. But, now, as per instructions from higher authorities, we have decided to take the statue and store it in our office premises,” Belonia Municipal Council’s CEO Amit Ghosh told PTI.

Ironically, Deodhar informed that the Tripura government will make an exception in its stand against the culture of building statues. The state government, Deodhar added, will install only one statue – that of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Debbarman Manikya Bahadur, Tripura’s last king.  The statue will be installed at the Agartala airport, which will also be named after the king.

Deodhar’s assertion about his party’s statue-building culture is, however, not borne out by the party’s agenda in other states. The BJP has announced its plans to install statues and memorials dedicated to its ideological icons in states like Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the party. The Gujarat government, for instance, is currently making preparations to inaugurate the Statue of Unity, a 182-metre-tall statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel – a project that is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s heart. The statue is supposed to be inaugurated on the occasion of Patel’s 143rd birth anniversary on October 31.

At the media conference, Deodhar targeted Manik Sarkar, the former Communist Party of India (Marxist) chief minister who had presided over the state for 15 years.  Describing Sarkar as “good for nothing”, Deodhar alleged that the Congress had acted in collusion with the “corrupt” communist party. “Manik Sarkar was good for nothing and was a hopeless leader,” he claimed.

Following the BJP victory in Tripura, a string of vandalisations had taken place in different parts of the country. A statue of Periyar was vandalised in Tamil Nadu’s Tirupattur while on his Facebook page, BJP’s national general secretary asked, “Who is Lenin? What is the relevance he holds in India? What is the link between communism and India? Lenin’s statues were destroyed in Tripura, tomorrow, in Tamil Nadu, casteist Periyar’s statues will be destroyed.”

Recent Spate of Statue Vandalism Gives Us a Perspective on Iconoclasm

Behind BJP leadership’s condemnation of vandals is the realisation that defacing statues is a throwback to the past’s rampant icon demolition.

Behind BJP leadership’s condemnation of vandals is the realisation that defacing statues is a throwback to the past’s rampant icon demolition.

The Lenin statue brought down in Tripura. Credit: PTI

The Lenin statue brought down in Tripura. Credit: PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s outright condemnation of the recent desecration of statues of political icons was in sharp contrast to his habitual silence on the violence that inter-faith couples and Muslim cattle traders encounter. Their assailants, mostly from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates, have seldom been warned as the desecrators of statues were by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah. He said, “Any person associated with the BJP, found to be involved with destroying any statue, will face severe action from the party.”

For the BJP, it was an ideological imperative to condemn statue vandalism because it has consistently railed against iconoclasm, depicted as a peculiarly Islamic political culture that Muslim rulers introduced in a tolerant, nonviolent Hindu India. Last week, this notion stood subliminally undermined with the desecration of statues of Vladimir Lenin, E.V.R. Ramasamy Periyar, Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and S.P. Mookerjee.

If in a 21st century, democratic India, bound by the rule of law, the statue of Lenin can be bulldozed in a flush of electoral triumph of the BJP, it would seem incredible to expect a better, more civil behaviour from our ancestors who lived centuries ago. Yet this expectation is built into the BJP’s narrative that says Muslim rulers demolished temples and broke idols to humiliate the Hindus. Further, the bigoted behaviour of iconoclasts is linked to the Islamic prescription forbidding the worshipping of idols.

The recent incidents of desecration challenge the Sangh’s narrative on several counts. Those who destroyed the statue of Lenin were Hindu, as was BJP national secretary H. Raja, who posted on his Facebook page, “Today Lenin’s statue, tomorrow Tamil Nadu’s EVR Ramaswami’s statue.” One of the two who is alleged to have desecrated the statue of Periyar was also a Hindu.

Then again, the icons whose statues were disfigured were all born Hindu, though Ambedkar subsequently embraced Buddhism and Periyar grew up to become an atheist. By contrast, Gandhi was deeply religious; Mookerjee is a Hindutva icon. Religious motivation could have been at best a contributory factor in some of the incidents of desecration witnessed last week, as so many historians have argued was also the case with Muslim iconoclasm centuries ago.

The desecrations took place in the backdrop of the BJP’s sweeping victory in Tripura. A BJP functionary ascribed the bulldozing of Lenin in Belonia to an “overflow of anger” against the 25-year-rule of the Left. Vengeance was identifiably the principal impulse behind the symbolical decapitation of Lenin. The BJP’s ascendancy countrywide has spawned hope in Raja that once his party conquers Tamil Nadu, Periyar will suffer symbolical vengeance for his anti-Brahmin movement. Certainly, the statue of Mookerjee in Kolkata was inked black by radical Leftists who said they were retaliating against the demolition of Lenin.

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Likewise, in medieval and ancient India, iconoclasm was often a form of vengeance, undertaken to convince the followers of the vanquished their helplessness, their vulnerability. This was indeed the message the desecrators in Kolkata were sending to the BJP footsoldiers in Tripura: “If you, because of your newly acquired power, can damage the statue of our icon, we can do the same to yours where you don’t control the levers of state power.”

Democracy is described as a battle of ideas, each of which a personality often embodies. For instance, Gandhi represents nonviolence and inclusive nationalism, Ambedkar Dalit assertion and quest for caste equality, Periyar the opposition against Brahminical supremacy and Dravidian sub-nationalism, Mookerjee the idea of Hindutva and Lenin the notion of building a classless society.

Ideas are intangible. Iconoclasm in democracy visually represents the defeat of an idea. More significantly, if subscribers of an idea cannot prevent the humiliation of a person who was its proponent or its best embodiment, they would appear to have been permanently deprived of creative energy. They are deemed incapable of a comeback because their gods were false.

This is more or less the point that Richard H. Davis, professor of religion and Asian studies, Bard College, makes on ancient Indian polity in his essay, ‘Indian Art Objects as Loot‘. He says the king and the deity had a shared sovereignty. This legitimised the king’s authority and turned the deity into the state’s most exalted symbol. When the victorious ferreted away a deity after defeating its patron, he effectively cut off his foe from the very source from which he drew his authority. All chances of his comeback were notionally squashed.

Davis provides umpteen examples from the seventh century to 11th century of Hindu kings raiding temples, plundering them and ferreting away the deities their opponents patronised. At times, the deities passed from one king to another as their fortunes fluctuated over time. This is known to us because inscriptions on deities describe who possessed them till when. Perhaps the ownership of deities led to a symbolical transference of their magical power to the owners.

These meanings, in different ways, were present in last week’s desecrations. To demolish the statue of Lenin was to also demolish the Left’s exalted symbol, to symbolically convey his ideas cannot energise the communists. There has been a growing trend to mutilate Ambedkar’s statues in north India, undertaken to convey to Dalits that their quest for social equality is futile.

The rise of a political party enhances the significance of its icons, as the king’s territorial expansion centuries ago would bestow an exalted status on the deity he patronised. For instance, the portrait of Vinayak Savarkar was installed in parliament during the tenure of BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Modi government has named a slew of programmes after the BJP ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tributes to Deendayal Upadhyay. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tributes to Deendayal Upadhyay. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The theme of deity abduction is also mimicked in India’s modern polity. The BJP’s appropriation of Sardar Patel is designed to legitimise its own past, not least because it was under his supervision of the Home Ministry the RSS was banned. Though Savarkar detested Gandhi and was an inspiration to his assassins, the BJP launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on October 2, the Mahatma’s birth anniversary. The BJP under Modi has concertedly tried to adopt Ambedkar as its own, hoping to register political gains through his magical sway over Dalit consciousness.

Conversely, the BJP’s strident criticism of Jawaharlal Nehru is similar in its meaning to Hindu kings sundering the vanquished from the deities who were the source of their legitimacy. Indeed, de-legitimising Nehru is to de-legitimise the Congress. The BJP will not honour the Congress’s icons – Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi – by naming welfare projects after them. Nor will Congress celebrate Upadhyaya or Savarkar whenever it returns to power.

Every regional party has its own array of icons, their fortune rising with that of their patrons. For instance, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s rise to power in Uttar Pradesh had its leader Mayawati establish parks in which statues of those representing the idea of caste equality were erected. The furore over these statues familiarised upper caste households in north India with these Dalit icons.

The political icons of today are arranged in a hierarchy just as the deities were in the past, their position dependent on the fortunes of their patrons. Badri Narayan in Fascinating Hindutva has collected a list of caste icons who the BJP seeks to include in its own pantheon. For instance, the Modi government named a train after Raja Suheldev, an 11th-century ruler who is revered by the Rajbhar caste in east UP; his statue is expected to be installed in Lucknow’s Ambedkar Memorial. But Suheldev will remain lower than, say, Upadhyaya in the BJP’s hierarchy of icons.

Bihar’s Kushwaha caste has taken to claiming that they are descendants of the Mauryan ruler Ashoka, and celebrate his birthday on April 14, which, by happenstance, is the day Ambedkar too was born. A medley of political meanings is combined here. Ashoka embraced Buddhism, as did Ambedkar in 1956. Social equality is thus demanded both on the basis of political morality and for possessing the attributes of the wise, powerful ruler as their ancestor.

In the pre-Islamic period, the dominant trend was of Hindu kings looting temples and abducting images. With time, instances of demolition of temples too were recorded. For instance, in the early tenth century, the Rashtrakuta King Indra III destroyed the temple of Kalapriya, which their arch enemy, the Pratiharas, patronised. “There is no question that medieval Hindu kings frequently destroyed religious images as part of more general rampages,” Davis writes.

Muslim rulers continued the tradition of desecration and demolition at their conquest of India, though, obviously, such iconoclasm they did not learn here. But it was certainly not an unusual practice centuries ago, perhaps the reason behind the paucity of contemporary Hindu accounts of their trauma at the destruction of temples. Tales of destruction mostly surface in hagiographic accounts celebrating Muslim rulers, often, as a boast.

The statue vandalism of last week frames a perspective on iconoclasm, as also do the countless desecrations of Ambedkar’s idols over the years – that appropriation and desecration of icons in a democratic India is a throwback to the abduction and demolition of idols in a land which was autocratic centuries ago. This realisation could well have been the impulse behind the prompt and welcome condemnation of statue vandalism by BJP leaders. In doing so, though, the BJP privileged statues over humans, their violent abuse rarely leading to its leaders condemning the assailants.

Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist based in Delhi.

BJP Workers Go on a Statue Purifying Spree In Bengal to Cleanse Busts of Syama Prasad Mookerjee

Armed with milk and Gangajal, BJP workers made a beeline for various busts of Mookerjee across the state to mark their protest against the clash on Thursday. 

Armed with milk and Gangajal, BJP workers made a beeline for various busts of Mookerjee across the state to mark their protest against the clash on Thursday.

A group of people clean the bust of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee after it was vandalised. Credit: PTI

New Delhi: The latest favourite entrant into the sport that is India’s politics has been the game of statue.

Over the past few weeks, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forced to break his silence and referee the matches. On Wednesday, he expressed his disapproval about the toppling of Lenin’s statue in south Tripura and the vandalism of social activist and politician E.V. Ramasamy ‘Periyar’ bust in Vellore in Tamil Nadu.

In the latest gaffe, BJP workers in West Bengal went on a statue purifying spree after party members and alleged Trinamool Congress members had an altercation outside Keoratala crematorium in Kolkata on Thursday when they went there to “purify” a bust of Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee after it was reportedly defaced and blackened by some students of Jadavpur University (JU) and members of an ultra-Left group named ‘Radical’ a day before.

Armed with milk and Gangajal, BJP workers made a beeline for various busts of Mookerjee in the state to mark their protest against the clash on Thursday.

“As directed by our party’s state president, our workers carried out the purification programmes across the state. This is to mark our protest against yesterday’s attack on our activists,” said state BJP general secretary Sanjay Singh.

However, in Serampore, reported the Indian Express, BJP workers were allegedly assaulted by TMC members after they purified a bust. The party’s Hooghly district president Bhaskar Bhattacharya and others were injured in the attack.

Also read:
» After bringing down Lenin’s statue in Tripura, BJP leaders turn to Periyar in Tamil Nadu
» ‘Jan Gan Man Ki Baat’: Vinod Dua discusses the recent incidents of vandalism triggered by the demolition of Lenin’s statue in Tripura by BJP supporters
» BJP’s Ram Madhav, state governor hail toppling of Lenin statue in Tripura

“The programme was carried out today in an emergency situation. We did not inform the police as it was initiated at the eleventh hour. But TMC workers under the leadership of (local leaders) Pappu Singh and Uttam Roy launched an attack on us. We had completed our programme by the time they came to the spot, but still they beat us up. This is very unfortunate,” Bhattacharya told reporters.

Denying the allegations, Pappu Singh said, “We had gone there to purify the statue as we do not believe in damaging statues of great personalities. BJP workers were there but there was no trouble.”

The spree of statue vandalisation continued unabated when on Tuesday night, a statue of B.R. Ambedkar has been vandalised by unidentified miscreants in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut.

But hypocrisy also reared it ugly head in light of these recent incidents as BJP rushes to protect certain statues and debase others. For example, BJP’s Ram Madhav and state governor and former West Bengal state unit chief of the BJP, Tathagata Roy, hailed the toppling of Lenin’s statue in Tripura. This is despite the fact that BJP cadres not only brought down the statue but also reportedly “played football with the head of the statue”.