Bye-bye Saint Lenin: BJP's Northeast win, attacks on statues, and more

The demolition of a statue of Lenin in Tripura earlier this week, allegedly by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, after the party snatched the Northeast state from the Left Front, which had ruled it continuously since 1993, reminded me of another fall of a communist government. In 2011, the Trinamool Congress routed the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led leftist coalition in West Bengal, which had been in power, uninterrupted, since the end of the Emergency. For many of us, born in the early- to mid-1980s, that would be the first time we would experience a change of government at the state level. It was exciting and, at the same time, daunting.

 
Chronicling the end of the seven-decade long Soviet rule in Russia that ended in 1991, journalist Svetlana Alexievich in her mammoth Secondhand Time concentrates more on the quotidian than in the momentous: “I don’t ask people about socialism... I want to know about... music, dances, hairdos.” A similar enquiry into the lives of regular people in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, which have experienced long stints of communist government, could provide clues about how the philosophy permeates every aspect of human life. It could also tell us why it inspires such a desire among its detractors to erase its iconography.

 
To anyone who has lived in a communist state, its iconography becomes a part of the mental make-up. Statues and wall graphiti depicting its saints (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and sometimes, even Stalin) are ubiquitous and red flags and the hammer and sickle sprout everywhere like weeds. Growing up in the Nineties and the first decade of this century, all of us read the great Russians and the standard Leftist texts in Vostok and Progress Publisher editions. The lyrics of the International were not unfamiliar to us, as were the songs of Indian People’s Theatre Association doyens such as Salil Chowdhury. At the theatres — and I was actively involved with many groups in Kolkata — it was more common to see productions of Brecht or Gorky plays than even Shakespeare. One could go on and on about it: Soviet/Bolshevik nostalgia is a cottage industry, perhaps best depicted in the German film,Good Bye, Lenin! (2003).

 

Perhaps the fetishisation of icons by communists — not only in India but everywhere — is a result of the catholic, fundamentally religious nature that Marxist-Leninist philosophy often assumes. Marx famously described religion as “the opium of the masses”. But paradoxically, the philosophical system he developed often resembled Judeo-Christian religions he despised. The communist party in power assumed — or appropriated — the office of the sole arbiter of Marxist thought, often interpreting it to suit its own narrow and immediate ends, and disallowing any demurs. Scholar Marcin Kula claims “communism was never and nowhere free of quasi-religious elements”. In other words, the philosophy was often forgotten and replaced with icons, which were easier to display and manipulate.

 
Naturally, enemies of communism find it easy to attack these icons, like they did in Tripura. Demolishing a statue of Lenin — or Periyar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, or B R Ambedkar — might have some symbolic value, but that’s about it. Students of religious history would be familiar with the fight over icons and artworks between Catholics and Protestants. One of the primary targets of Martin Luther’s Reformation was against the many religious objects doing the rounds of Europe at his time, such as pieces of wood advertised to be from the cross of Jesus. If all the wood were put together, he is reported as saying, it could make an ark. The Jesuits fought back with their Baroque art, which was meant to appeal to the feelings of their viewers.

 
Communism, like both Catholicism and Protestantism, also created a pantheon of saints. There were the bearded creators: Marx and Engels. Then there were the apostles: Lenin, Mao, ‘Che’, Ho Chi Minh — and a little problematically, Trotsky and Stalin. The voluminous and often boring books they produced were given the same status as religious texts, inviolable and unquestionable. In Bengal at least, these books were often sold at subsidised rates at fairs of Durga pujo. Once the regimes withered away, the value associated with these objects also began to fade. There must be many statues of communist saints in Tripura. Perhaps, it is time to bid them farewell. Hopefully, they will all not be razed but, rather, allowed to wither away like their ideology.

 
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