Statue vandalism: Lumpen politics hurts growth and development

The upsurge of political violence in Tripura, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh over the past few days raises afresh the disturbing spectre of lumpen politics. To be sure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah acted with admirable speed to curb the violence in Tripura and Tamil Nadu (a Periyar statue was vandalised in Vellore district), and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has had ultra-left miscreants who spray-inked a statue of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, a Hindutva icon, arrested. Vandalising statues of political icons by rival political parties is, of course, the least of the issues. The violence in Tripura included the senseless destruction of CPI-M’s (or the Communist Party of India — Marxist) Agartala office, and for a while the state capital faced the real danger of mayhem had the Centre not stepped in. Interestingly, prior to these interventions, some BJP leaders had endorsed the attacks and Tripura Governor Tathagata Roy had tweeted that a newly elected government could undo the work of a previous government. Unedifying images of BJP supporters on the rampage will scarcely help the party’s cause just as it readies to take power in the state and seeks to downplay its “Hindi” roots in Tamil Nadu ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha elections.

 
Political violence is not, of course, the sole responsibility of any one party in India. If the palm were to be awarded on this score, however, it would surely go to the parties on all shades of the red spectrum. Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal remain salutary lessons of how overt or covert politically-sponsored violence can precipitate a sustained flight of capital. Enduring lawlessness in rural areas in these states continues to account for corporate India’s reluctance to invest in these regions. This dark history of post-independence India should hold important lessons for the BJP, which is in power, singly and in alliance, in most states as well as in assorted local governments. Unlike the Left, the BJP does not have a formal cadre on which it can rely to do the grunt work of ground-level mobilisation. It relies instead on a wide assortment of saffron organisations whose ideologies vary in intensity along the Hindu nationalist scale, of which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is the most powerful. The affiliations of these organisations to the BJP are also variable, which means the party leadership does not have full control over them. Post-election Uttar Pradesh has shown that the prospect of the freelance foot-soldiers of these organisations running rampant on their own initiative remains high, especially when opportunities for employment are subdued.

 
What tacitly incentivises such behaviour is the reluctance shown by political leaders in coming out against it both in words and deeds. But in calling off the lumpen elements in Tripura as well as in censuring his own party colleague for an incendiary social media post, Mr Modi has sent out a powerful signal on the importance of law and order. It is vital that this principle is applied universally. In any case, the even more relevant question is why be obsessed with playing statue politics when there are far more pressing problems confronting the nation.