The demolition of a statue of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin and the manner in which it happened a day after the BJP convincingly wrested power in Tripura is crass, to say the least. For those uninitiated, a statue of a Left icon and Communist leader Vladimir Lenin was demolished using a bulldozer at Belonia town in South Tripura.
Have the ruling party supporters in their boisterous exuberance forgotten that they now rule and represent both those who voted for them and those who didn’t?
Acts like these are synonymous with banana republics where neither the overthrown government nor the newly installed one has any credibility much less complete authority over the people they are ruling and resort to “revenge” tactics in a bid to strengthen their grip on power to weaken the opposition or demolish them altogether.
The question that must then be asked is, has the state of Tripura and the ruling party members fallen to such lows that their first acts are the show of unbridled power as a means to intimidate the recently demolished opposition? Shouldn’t they be focussed on promising that their government will hold true to the promises made pre-election?
The peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to the next is one of the defining hallmarks of a healthy democracy. Reports emerging from Tripura have indicated that primarily on account of the attacks faced by the members of the defeated Left, the transfer of power is anything but peaceful.
On Tuesday, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to the state’s Governor and the DGP and asked them to ensure peace till a new government was installed, this after Section 144 was imposed in Tripura.
In most cases where there isn’t a peaceful transfer of power, it is the defeated party that is to blame for the violence as it attempts to cling on to power despite having lost the mandate of the people. That much of the violence was down to the party that is to take power does not bode well for the state that has been under the Left rule for close to 25 years.
In the present situation, it is irrelevant whose statue is being brought down, so long as it is an icon of the recently vanquished government.
Arguments that Lenin was a communist dictator and didn’t deserve a statue in the first place or that his statue deserved to be demolished do not hold water as that was not the primary reason why his statue was brought down. That his statue was demolished, without as much of due process, and his head played around like a football was not because he was a once upon a time dictator in faraway Russia, but because he was an icon of the recently defeated Communist government.
Such incidents will only fan the flames of hatred between two political ideologies and lead to simmering tensions over the coming months. A bad precedent for the future of the state and country as a whole.
