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.
Days after the Bharatiya Janata Party won assembly elections in Tripura the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Tripura accused it of unleashing concerted violence against its workers and vandalising its offices. In a memorandum submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday the CPI(M) alleged that 514 of its workers had been injured with more than 1 500 homes attacked purportedly by BJP supporters. In addition it claimed 350 of its offices had been ransacked or captured by the newly elected party. This is not just an attack on our party said CPI(M) leader Jitendra Chaudhury. This is an attack on our Constitution our fundamental rights. Chaudhury who is one of the two Lok Sabha members from Tripura claimed the party s workers were being attacked in broad daylight by lethal weapons and petrol bombs . He alleged the attackers had the tacit support of the BJP s senior leaders. There are being instigated this is an organised attack he said. The parliamentarian said that the jubilant reactions of top BJP leaders to the destruction of a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov or Lenin by alleged BJP supporters in a town called Belonia in the state s southern district was testament to the saffron party s endorsement of violence. Ram Madhav the party s national general secretary justified the vandalism in a tweet he alleged. They are sowing the seeds of hatred in Tripura. In a tweet that has since been deleted Madhav had written: People taking down Lenin s statue not in Russia; it is in Tripura. Chalo Paltai . Chalo Paltai Let s change was the war cry of the BJP s election campaign in Tripura.On Tuesday Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh called the governor of Tripura Tathagata Roy and asked him to ensure peace till the new government took charge. On Monday Roy had expressed support for the razing of the Lenin statue.What one democratically elected government can do another democratically elected government can undo. And vice versa https://t.co/Og8S1wjrJs Tathagata Roy (@tathagata2) March 5 2018 We reject these charges The Bharatiya Janata Party s spokesperson in the state Mrinal Kanti Deb however rejected the charges against its leaders and workers. He alleged it was a conspiracy by the CPI(M) to disturb the law and order of the state. People have changed their colours overnight he said. A lot of Left workers after our victory started identifying themselves as the BJP workers. They are the ones involved in the few sporadic violent activities that may have taken place. But once our government takes charge all of them will be sent to jail. Several people in the state said that violence was quite widespread. In every village there has been violence said a rubber planter from Santirbazar in South Tripura. This is really disappointing because this is not what I had voted the BJP for. I hope the party s senior leaders take action. They can t just say they are not our workers. Said an Agartala-based businessman: Yes there has been violence but it only natural. There were a lot of pent-up emotions among people. The Left after all had been in power for 25 years. Post-poll violence regular farePolitical observers point out that post-poll violence in Tripura is not a new occurrence. It happened in 2013 in 2008 in 2003 so there s nothing really new said an Agartala-based political analyst. But it does seem that there has been a quick turnover this time a lot of low-level Left leaders seem to have changed loyalties. Miscreants understand which side to be on and as newcomers you have to prove your worth that s how it works everywhere. Tapas Dey a veteran Congress leader and former legislator said the CPI(M) had only itself to blame. Post-poll violence is a legacy that the Left had left behind claimed Dey. They are doing this hue and cry this time because they are facing the heat. But the truth is they have created this culture. Electoral violence is common in Tripura. In the run-up to the state elections both the CPI(M) and the BJP lost several of their workers in violent clashes that would routinely break out between the two parties. Government officials however said that violence was beginning to taper off beginning Monday evening. Things are under control said a senior state government official. There are prohibitory orders in some places but that s only a preventive measure. A top official of the district administration of Sepahijala one of the two districts where Section 144 was imposed on Sunday said there had been sporadic clashes. He claimed many of these clashes were personal that had been given political colour . Both parties are involved he said on Tuesday evening. This happens after election results in Tripura and we expect things to be completely normal by tomorrow.
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.
ALSO READ TDP-BJP coalition: Andhra CM says I never break mitra dharma Special status: Andhra CM questions BJP s silence Andhra CM warns BJP to not play with Telugu people BJP Congress responsible for injustice with Andhra: TDP AP CM congratulates BJP for winning Gujarat Himachal polls span.p-content div id = div-gpt line-height:0;font-size:0 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in Andhra Pradesh have announced their resignation from state cabinet moments after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers to resign from the Union Cabinet.Soon after Naidu s press conference BJP MLA Akula Satyanarayana spoke to media and announced that the two BJP ministers in the state cabinet namely Kamineni Srinivas and Paidikondala Manikyala Rao will resign on Thursday morning. He said both Srinivas and Manikyala Rao would not attend the cabinet meeting to be held on Thursday morning.Meanwhile BJP leader Krishna Sagar Rao on Wednesday called Naidu s announcement a political opportunism . BJP believes what has happened tonight is a classic case of political opportunism and a case of compulsive politics Rao told ANI.He also called Naidu s statement that the central government was not standing up to support Andhra Pradesh a blatant lie .Earlier on Wednesday night Naidu directed two Telugu Desam Party ministers to resign from Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led cabinet amid the growing strain in ties between his party and the Bharatiya Janata Party over alleged neglect of the state in the Union Budget.Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y. S. Chowdary are the two ministers who have been asked to resign from their respective offices. This is our right. The Centre is not fulfilling the promises it made said Naidu who has been urging the Centre to give special category status to Andhra Pradesh.Naidu s reaction came after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said no to chief minister s demand earlier in the day.(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NEW DELHI: An easing of tensions between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) seemed evident after a cordial meeting of the regional party s leaders with finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday evening after some heated moments in Parliament during the day. The meeting lowered temperatures after the government seemed ready to make a statement in Parliament detailing financial assistance provided to Andhra Pradesh. TDP has alleged that the Centre has failed to deliver on fiscal commitments following the creation of Telangana. There has been some exasperation in BJP ranks over TDP s disruption of Parliament over injustice to Andhra Pradesh since the first half of the Budget session. TDP has not been satisfied with the Centre s statement that it will find ways to support financial demands raised by the state. Sources said the Centre could give details of assistance provided for the construction of a new capital at Amravati and the Polavaram project to Parliament if the need arose a move that could bring the confrontation with TDP to a head in the midst of fresh efforts to form a third front . The political churn follows the BJP s success in recent state polls in the north-east. TDP leaders are insisting that assistance amounting to around Rs 16 000 crore is due to the state and only a part of this has been delivered. They say this a reduced figure arrived at after the Modi government assumed office. BJP leaders however argue that earlier assistance provided was used to fund welfare schemes and the Centre could not underwrite the bill. Sources at the Centre said that nearly Rs 12 000 crore had been already released to Andhra Pradesh and the former only needed to provide around Rs 1 500 crore that was committed earlier. The Centre said the state government had little to show by way of progress on the ground. Even on the issue of a new state capital in Amravati the state government s response was ambivalent. While ruling out special category state status citing recommendations from several panels sources said the Centre had proposed that it could provide funding through externally-aided assistance. Though this was communicated to the Chandrababu Naidu government almost a month ago the state government was yet to come back with a list of projects. Similarly the request for additional support from Nabard was not accepted as it would impact the fiscal calculations but an option of providing funds through a special purpose vehicle has been suggested where the financial institution could chip in. Again the Andhra government was yet to come back with proposals.
Since Saturday a new narrative has emerged. The Bharatiya Janata Party has swept the North East decimating all opposition including the Congress and the Left. A part of the country that was once cut off from the national mainstream has now been engulfed in the saffron deluge.It is true that the BJP has made remarkable gains in the North East. From no government and few seats in 2014 when the BJP came to power at the Centre it is now part of government in six out of seven states. But a closer look at electoral maps of the North East suggests claims of a BJP wave may be overstated.In elections held in the North East a decade ago the BJP had cornered just 2.6% of the vote share. This year the same three states went to elections. In Nagaland Meghalaya and Tripura combined the BJP managed 26.47% of the vote share. A sharp increase certainly but a wave? It is not just about vote share which after all is a function of the number of seats contested but even when we consider the seats won a look at the constituency map of all seven states of the North East shows the saffron party remains a patchy though pivotal presence in the region.Patchwork verdictsThe North East is a tremendously diverse region and each of the seven states has a distinct politics. Christian majority Nagaland and Meghalaya for instance are vastly different from the border states of Tripura and Assam. Within states there may be several different regions. Take Assam home to the autonomous council areas of Bodoland the Muslim-majority districts of Goalpara and Dhubri as well as to the districts of Upper Assam once the epicentre of Assamese nationalism. To speak of sweeping the North East as a whole is a Delhi-centric fallacy.Arunachal Pradesh where the BJP came to power in 2016 was an unelected victory engineered through defections and it is alleged by the Centre wielding undue influence on the office of the governor. Elsewhere the party s rapid advance seems to be fuelled by two factors. First by smart alliances and focus on target constituencies it is able to ensure high strike rate. Where the saffron party did not have the seats it was able to cobble together strategic alliances with regional parties both before and after elections to ensure it had a place in government.The Meghalaya factorIn these elections alone the idea of a saffron wave needs to be interrogated. But first let s acknowledge that it won Tripura convincingly. In a 60-member assembly the BJP will have 35 seats enough to form government even without its ally the Indigenous People s Front of Tripura. The BJP won 35 seats with 43% of the vote share while the Left managed only 16 seats with 42.7% but that is because the BJP contested 51 seats and the Left 59. The BJP thus won 70% of the seats it contested against 29% for the CPI(M). But the Indigenous People s Front of Tripura did even better since it won 8 of the 9 seats it contested which is a strike rate of 89%.Even if the Tripura results are called a sweep for the BJP it did not exactly win the Nagaland and Meghalaya elections. In Nagaland it increased its tally from one seat in the 2013 elections to 12 this time. Its vote share increased from 1.8% in 2013 to 15.3% this year. Considering the BJP only fielded candidates in 20 seats this was a very respectable showing. But the party still has just a fifth of the assembly seats and will play second fiddle in the alliance that finally comes to power.In Meghalaya these elections were decidedly a vote against the BJP which won only two seats in spite of an energetic poll campaign. These were unreserved and largely urban constituencies clustered around the capital of Shillong. It did not make a dent in the Garo Hills where agitations around the BJP s beef politics were most intense. It did not even gain seats from the Jaintia Hills a hub of resentment against the Congress. Part of the state s coal belt these areas had been hit economically after the court s mining ban in 2014. It was felt that the Congress had not done enough to stop it while the BJP promised to reverse the ban.The BJP will come to power in Meghalaya on the strength of regional allies. The National People s Party gained an impressive 19 seats up from two in the 2013 elections and is likely to be the fulcrum around which government is formed. The BJP and the National People s Party managed to cobble together a majority with smaller parties but it remains an uneasy alliance. On Monday there were rumours of a rift in the new coalition with the Hill States People s Democratic Party reportedly objecting to a tie up with the BJP.The Meghalaya verdict reveals deep wells of tribal resentment against the BJP that have not been stirred by the so-called saffron wave.Congress waning?Meanwhile though it has virtually been wiped out off Nagaland and Tripura the Congress managed to hold its own in Meghalaya. In spite of visible anti-incumbency and a government that was perceived to be lax and corrupt it managed to emerge as the single largest party with 21 seats and a vote share of 28.5%. But the Congress ceding ground to the BJP has become a pattern in the last few years.Take Manipur where the BJP came to power last year. The Congress won 28 seats to the BJP s 21 with only a slightly lower vote share 35.1% against 36.3%. But it was the BJP which managed to persuade smaller parties to form the ruling coalition.It was different in Assam where the BJP scored its biggest win in the North East before Tripura. The Congress got 31% of the vote share after contesting 122 seats while the BJP got 29.5% and won 60 seats out of the 89 it contested. To cobble together a majority the party had already forged a rainbow coalition in the diverse state tying up with the Bodoland People s Front the Asom Gana Parishad and other smaller http://investimonials.com/users/shopozoind@gmail.com.aspx tribal parties.With the BJP forming the Union government the centre of gravity has shifted towards the party in these poor states of the North East heavily dependent on funds from Delhi. It was the same in the United Progressive Alliance years when the Congress had a presence in all state governments in the region apart from Nagaland. From being a non-entity a few years ago the saffron party has certainly become a force to reckon with in most states of the North East. The Congress is also a shrinking presence with no energy to reverse the trend. But verdicts of a saffron tide and a Congress disappearance would be premature.
ALSO READ Tripura polls: BJP pitches for Vaampanth Mukt Bharat BJP uses polarisation as tool: Cong BJP seeks its CMs views on One nation-One election idea All Shiv Sena candidates in Gujarat polls lose deposit A chilly day in UP ends in heated blanket battle span.p-content div id = div-gpt line-height:0;font-size:0 Two more people accused of hurling a petrol bomb at Bharatiya Janata Party s (BJP) office in Coimbatore arrested by the police on Wednesday. One more person had surrendered before the police earlier today.The accused named Jeeva Nanthan Gautham and Balu are workers of Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam(TDPK).A petrol bomb was hurled after the statue of social reformer Periyar (EVR Ramasamy) was vandalised in Vellore just like Vladimir Lenin s statue in Tripura.BJP founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee s statue was also vandalized in Kolkata s Kalighat on Wednesday.Dr BR Ambedkar s statue was also razed by unidentified people in Meerut s Mawana on late Tuesday night.Taking serious notes of such incidents of vandalism the MHA said that any person indulging in such act must be sternly dealt with and booked under relevant provisions of law.(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
No comments:
Post a Comment