Hours after a BJP office in Tamil Nadu was attacked party National Secretary H. Raja on Wednesday expressed regret for his Facebook post that said statues of rationalist movement founder E.V.Ramasamy or Periyar would be razed to the ground in the state. Early on Wednesday a petrol bomb was hurled at a BJP office around 500 km from here in Coimbatore by unidentified persons. Later in a fresh Facebook post on Wednesday Raja expressed his heartfelt regret for his Tuesday s post which he claimed was a message posted by his social media administrator without his permission and hence he had removed it. Raja expressed regret if his post had hurt anybody s feelings. According to him damaging the statues of Ramasamy is not agreeable. The message that was posted and later removed said: Who is Lenin? What is the connection between him (Lenin) and India? What connection between communism and India? Lenin s statue was broken down in Tripura. Today it is Lenin s statue in Tripura and tomorrow it will be the statue of caste fanatic E.V.Ramasamy. Late on Tuesday two persons were arrested in Thirupattur in Vellore district for vandalising Ramasamy s statue. The attackers at the BJP s office in Coimbatore had come in a three wheeler and had thrown the petrol bomb inside the office. Police are investigating the case.
The Big Story: Statutory warningsAfter a number of statues were vandalised this week starting with Lenin in Tripura where the Bharatiya Janata Party just scored a big electoral victory the Central leadership was firm in its response. Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the statue toppling spree warning of stern action . Party president Amit Shah also said he had spoken to the state units in Tamil Nadu and Tripura and that any person associated with the BJP involved in destroying statues would face severe action . Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called the Tripura governor and senior police officials asking them to maintain order till the new government was sworn in. As more statues were defaced in Tripura the Centre asked states to investigate attacks. The vandalisation had travelled from Tripura to Tamil Nadu and then to West Bengal where a bust of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee was blackened in alleged retaliation by Left supporters. So it was commendable that the top leadership stepped in made strong statements and took measures to keep the trouble from spreading. It appears however that the party has not lost its old habit of speaking in mixed voices. Earlier BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav had tweeted appreciatively about the statue toppling in Tripura though he later deleted the tweet. Tripura governor Tathagata Roy who seems to make no secret of his saffron loyalties continues to cheer on the statue toppling. Tamil Nadu BJP leader H Raja s Facebook post seemed to incite the vandalisation of Periyar statues in the state though he also took it down later. In spite of the stern warnings of the prime minister and party president no action will be taken against him. But the BJP has a history of double speak. After the Dadri lynching of 2015 for instance when a man was murdered for allegedly eating beef the party s top leadership had kept silent for months. While one leader at the Centre condemned it another tried to call the brutal crime a misunderstanding or an accident . All the time BJP state-level leaders and workers spewed hate and cheered on the guilty. It had taken quite a while for the prime minister to speak then. Indeed the party top brass s prompt and unequivocal response now is in striking contrast to its reticence on lynchings and attacks by cow vigilantes where human lives were at stake. Modi took more than a week to break his silence on Dadri and even then it was an oblique reference at a political rally rather than a direct condemnation. On cow vigilantes he first said 80% were fake implying that some were genuine and legitimate. It was almost two years after the Dadri lynching that he said killing in the name of the cow was unacceptable. It has been argued that the BJP moved swiftly now to protect its own interests. In Tripura where it had claimed victory over the politics of violence statue toppling did not sit well. In Tamil Nadu where the party is trying to expand its base and reach out to backward communities attacks on Periyar considered founder of the Dravidian Self-Respect Movement could only damage the BJP s image. Political parties will of course act to protect their interests. But an elected government which is responsible for the security of all citizens not merely those who vote for it should perhaps be less selective. As it asks affected states to investigate vandalisations could the Centre also ask others to speed up justice in the lynching cases?The Big ScrollRohan venkataramakrishnan asks whether a toppled statue and warnings to the Supreme Court make acche din.Ipsita Chakravarty reminds that statue toppling is not a democratic sport.Vinita Govinfarajan explains the BJP s animosity towards Periyar and his statues.Punditry1. In the Indian Express Christophe Jaffrelot writes that Karnataka offers an alternative trajectory based on growth and the closing of social religious gaps.2. In the Hindu Gopalkrishna Gandhi warns against Operation Dhakka .3. In the Economic Times TK Arun writes on the lessons these North East elections hold for political parties.GigglesLenin 2.0. # cartoon @timesofindia ##Lenin #TripuraViolence pic.twitter.com/QlXimbAZQD Sandeep Adhwaryu (@CartoonistSan) March 7 2018 Don t miss...Sahana Ghosh writes on the alarming levels of pangolin poaching in India and the urgent need to study the species:Dubbing the number of pangolins illegally traded in India as alarming experts say the estimated total of 5 772 animals is likely to be an underestimate as only a fraction of illegal wildlife trade is detected and the actual number is likely to be far higher.Pangolins commonly referred to as scaly anteaters are reported to be among the most trafficked wildlife species globally the report emphasises. The mammals are mostly poached for their meat and scales.
ALSO READ TN minister condemns BJP leader s Periyar remarks BJP s Raja invites ire of TN parties for social media post TN incubation ground of terror activities: BJP Kamal s political entry will not impact us: Panneeerselvam TN BJP sacks functionary for vandalising Periyar statue span.p-content div id = div-gpt line-height:0;font-size:0 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tamil Nadu president Tamilisai Soundararajan expelled R Muthuraman party functionary on Wednesday.Muthuraman was arrested for vandalising the statue of social reformer Periyar (EV Ramasamy) at Thirupathur in Vellore district. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also strongly disapproved incidents of vandalism reported from several parts of the country.Meanwhile Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) working President MK Stalin also demanded the arrest of H Raja following his now deleted controversial post on Facebook in which the latter had written that the statue of Periyar would be razed just like Vladimir Lenin s statue in Tripura.The post read Who is Lenin and what is the connection between Lenin and India? What connection has India with Communists? Lenin s statue has been removed in Tripura. Today it is Lenin s statue in http://www.betternetworker.com/members/kfckk Tripura tomorrow it will be the statue of caste fanatic EVR Ramasamy. Raja however apologised for the same by saying that the post was done by one of the administrators of his page without his permission.(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On 6 March just days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in the Tripura state Assembly elections a mob of saffron party workers bulldozed a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Belonia. The celebratory act was undertaken with much fervor to mark the right-wing party s decisive victory over the 25 years-long left-wing government in the state led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). BJP workers shout victory slogans during Vijay rally to celebrate their party s success in North East Assembly elections outside state party headquarter in Kolkata on Sunday. PTI Within India s postcolonial polity the dismantling of the statue in Belonia was a public spectacle unlike any other. Not that statues of political leaders haven t been vandalised in the past but such festive destructions in the wake of a sweeping election victory have been rare. Not many mainstream political parties have dared to ride majority public mandates to swiftly vandalise statues. It is not hard to comprehend the motivation behind Lenin s Tripura fall: the BJP s foot soldiers rode the victory wave to do what they ve probably been wanting to do since the very idea of re-capturing Tripura from the communists took shape in the party s high command i.e. raze CPM s legacy to the ground and start afresh. A standard part of this design is to erase public memory of Tripura s Communist past and statues are a convenient place to start. What more Lenin s controversial (and somewhat disturbing) political legacy makes him the perfect game meat. In an objective sense the Belonia destruction represents an all-too-familiar project of political iconoclasm. History is replete with ample instances of legacy destructions across the board: from Bamiyan to Kiev. These were often done in contravention of the law straddling the broader framework of resistance politics. After all in a democracy erecting a certain statue is as legitimate or illegitimate as bringing it down. Toppling statues kicking police barricades: no big deal in the restive milieu of democratic struggles. As American journalist and current dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Steve Coll wrote last year in an article on New Delhi s attempts to reconcile with colonial stone relics: One difference between democracies and dictatorships is that the constructing and revising of public spaces is not a propaganda opportunity for the ruler but a realm of democratic discourse influenced by popular opinion and competitive electoral politics. But history cannot be a veneer on political disruptions when it comes to partisan offensives. It is imperative to call out the Belonia act for what it was: violent. It is also important to note what the BJP did and did not do. The BJP did destroy the statue. The BJP did not relocate it out of public view when it had the option of doing so. Thus Lenin s nth fall in a far-flung corner of India had a peculiar tenor to it. The statue was bulldozed not in active resistance like in the cases of American Confederate statues being brought down to protest against Trump s racism but as an aggressive mark of all-encompassing victory. BJP did not need to bring Lenin down - they had already won the popular mandate. In that sense Belonia 2018 mirrors Baghdad 2003 where US forces brought down Saddam Hussein s statue simply to mark a wildly successful invasion and usher in a new era. The parallel drawn here isn t really between Lenin and Saddam (that s for the jury to decide) but between the aggressor s warlike pathologies. The critical difference here though is that while Baghdad 2003 happened in the thick of a full-blown military invasion Belonia 2003 unraveled in the immediate aftermath of a free fair and peaceful election. Herein lies the menacing quality of Lenin s Tripura fall. By exploiting a decisive public mandate to bulldoze a statue the BJP has only made a complete mockery of the very ethos of electoral democracy. Its leaders would do well to note that poll victories in a democracy are not free passes to take unilateral action especially when that action directly impacts a publicly-owned space. Any belief otherwise is taking the electorate for granted. If the BJP does actually believe that the Tripura victory carries a de facto public tender to destroy statues then it might want to wash the murk off its eyes. Communism did not come to the state just the other day: it was the political status quo for 25 long years a large part of which saw socio-economic stability and peace. To tinker with this entrenched legacy in a particularly dramatic fashion would be to push the fresh election mandate over the edge. The BJP should also remember that the quest to erase history is a futile one and more often than not an endeavour at self-destruction. A better template for revisionist politics something that the saffronites seem to be doping on at the moment is to permit problematic relics to remain as they are and contextualise them within democratic values of debate and dissent. On this the Director of the Smithsonian s National Museum of African American History and Culture Lonnie G. Bunch III offers a blunt take: I am loath to erase history. For me it s less about whether they statues come down or not and more about what the debate is stimulating. Fact remains that the BJP s bulldozing of Lenin s statue will go down as the party s reckless attempt to violently insert itself into Tripura s rich history. Not unlike the destruction of the Babri Masjid by Karsevaks in 1992 the Belonia bulldozing will also go down as a patent marker of right-wing exclusionist politics in this country which banks upon total homogenisation of political belief systems to ensure its own survival. The author is researcher and coordinator South East Asia Research Programme at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.
Yelahanka was a reserved constituency for Scheduled Castes until the 2004 Assembly elections it became a general constituency after delimitation. It is one of the smallest Assembly constituencies in Bengaluru with 3.73 lakh voters. It s also a bustling town due to its proximity to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA). The suburb likely to witness a direct contest between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. Both parties have consistently polled 30% to 40% of votes while the JD (S) has been in a distant third place except in the 2013 when Congress rebel B. Chandrappa contested on a JD(S) ticket and lost. He has since returned to the Congress. Though the Congress has the record of winning six of the last ten assembly elections from here Yelahanka was won by the BJP in the last two Assembly elections (since delimitation). BJP s SR Vishwanath won by a margin of 16 000 votes against Congress candidate B Chandrappa in 2008. Even when the tide was against BJP in the 2013 elections Vishwanath won by 18 000 votes. While BJP is sure to field him this time as well the Congress has a problem of plenty with at least 18 aspirants some of who have already started door-to-door campaigns. While it will be an uphill task for the Congress the BJP has the added advantage of having three sitting city corporators (out of four) from the party. The Kempegowda Atturu and Yelahanka Satellite Town Wards are represented by BJP corporators.The Congress is likely to field a candidate from the Vokkaliga community due as the caste-group has a majority in the constituency. M Rajkumar President of the Bengaluru North District Congress Committee said We have 100% hope. The BJP MLA is not accessible to people and does not have a good image he said.
Kolkata: Urging all regional parties to join hands to defeat the BJP in the 2019 general elections West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday warned the saffron brigade that for them alarm bells have already started ringing. All regional parties should join hands to defeat the BJP in 2019 (Lok Sabha poll) Ms Banerjee said at a rally organised by the Trinamool Congress on the International Women s Day.Ridiculing Bharatiya Janata Party s target of unseating the Trinamool to capture power in Bengal Ms Banerjee said it would remain a dream .Referring to the Telugu Desam party quitting Narendra Modi s government Ms Banerjee asked the BJP whether it could hear the sound of revolt. Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out she said.Decrying the centre s failure to give a special category status to Andhra Pradesh the TDP has quit the Modi government with its Ministers P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and Y.S. Chowdary (Science and Technology) submitting their resignations. CommentsMs Banerjee predicted the BJP s defeat next year and asked it to introspect whether it was in a position to retain power at the Centre. Stop dreaming about coming to power in Bengal look at yourselves and see whether you are in a position to retain power at the centre the Chief Minister said.
Kolkata: Urging all regional parties to join hands to defeat the BJP in the 2019 general elections West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday warned the saffron brigade that for them alarm bells have already started ringing. All regional parties should join hands to defeat the BJP in 2019 (Lok Sabha poll) Banerjee said at a rally organised by the Trinamool Congress on the International Women s Day. File image of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI Ridiculing Bharatiya Janata Party s target of unseating the Trinamool to capture power in Bengal Banerjee said it would remain a dream . Refering to the https://snupps.com/kkclear Telugu Desam Party quitting Narendra Modi s government Banerjee asked the BJP whether it could hear the sound of revolt. Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out she said. Decrying the centre s failure to give a special category status to Andhra Pradesh the TDP has quit the Modi government with its ministers P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Science and Technology) submitting their resignations. Banerjee predicted the BJP s defeat next year and asked it to introspect whether it was in a position to retain power at the Centre. Stop dreaming about coming to power in Bengal look at yourselves and see whether you are in a position to retain power at the centre the chief minister said.
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