Why Marxists didn't install Bhagat Singh's statue in Tripura? Lenin was a tyrant, a despot: Top historian Guha

By A Representative
One of the most prominent names in modern Indian history, Ramachandra Guha, has qualified the act of pulling down VI Lenin's statues in Tripura as the "price of dogma" paid by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), wondering, "What if the CPI(M) had installed statues of Bhagat Singh in Tripura? Would they have been vandalized by the BJP cadre after the CPI(M) was voted out of power in that state?"
Even as saying that "the triumphalist supporters of the BJP who brought down those statues of Lenin in Tripura are worthy only of contempt"', and insisting, he does not share "the BJP's xenophobia", Guha says, he also disagrees with the BJP justification for bringing down Lenin's statues because he was a "foreigner."
According to Guha, "Great human beings transcend national boundaries. I would be happy to have statues of (for example) Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Václav Havel installed in our cities and towns. But living as I do in a democracy, I would draw the line at dictators."
"The problem is not that Lenin was a foreigner, but that he was not a democrat", Guha says in an article in a top daily, adding, "Lenin was a tyrant, a despot, who first subordinated his country to his party before subordinating his party to himself. He had his enemies and rivals killed, placed curbs on the freedom of intellectual and artistic expression, and paved the way for the even more brutal dictatorship of Stalin."
"Lenin, incidentally, would have been a super-troll in the Age of Twitter", argues Guha, adding, "For he was a vindictive man, abusive in his writings and in speech. His hatred was not reserved for the bourgeoisie; socialists who disagreed with him were savagely set upon as well. Among those who attracted Lenin's ire was the German Marxist, Eduardo Bernstein, who had rejected violent revolution in favour of peaceful democratic change."

Underlining that Bhagat Singh's statue would been a better option than that of Lenin, Guha says, "Bhagat Singh was both an Indian and a Marxist. Yet, because the official Left had largely forgotten him, he was being resurrected and praised by Hindutvawadis."
Noting that there are two reasons why the CPI(M) venerates Lenin and Stalin far more than Bhagat Singh, Guha says, "Having been brought up from an early age to worship them, they cannot think of doing otherwise. Just as boys raised as Vaishnavites can never see anything good in any other god but Vishnu (or his avatars), so devout Marxists stay dogmatically with their childhood Gods as they grow into adulthood and beyond that into dotage."
"The second reason why Bhagat Singh remains a minor figure in the CPI(M)'s pantheon is that the party traces its origins to the undivided Communist Party of India, and the Sikh radical was not a member of the CPI. He was, rather, part of a different formation called the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA)."
Taking a historical view of things, Guha says, "The CPI had a base among workers in Bombay and Calcutta. The HSRA, on the other hand, was more active in northern India. So, although Bhagat Singh was a Marxist, since he was from the HSRA and not the undivided CPI, the CPI(M) may be reluctant to put up his portrait at party conferences."
Pointing towards how has the Leninist dogma harmed CPI(M) in the recent past, Guha says, "Since the Great God Lenin had so long ago mandated that Leninists should not work alongside other parties, the CPI(M) did not join the Manmohan Singh government. They have paid for this error. And the people of India have paid for it too."
Underlining that those who sought to have Lenin's statues erected _evoke pity and sadness", says Guha, adding, "Bhagat Singh, living in Lahore in the 1920s, had no way of knowing of the perversions and horrors of the regime that Lenin and Stalin had installed in Russia."
It was only in the late 1930s, the forced famines, the deaths in the camps, and the violence unleashed on political rivals were all well documented, says Guha, adding, "In 1956, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself denounced Stalin. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and Lenin was at last comprehensively rejected in the countries over which he had once ruled. Yet, through these decades, our own communists forgot nothing and learnt nothing."

Comments

Shabnam Hashmi said…

How was Lenin a tyrant? Don't agree with Guha

March 22, 2018

Pravin Mishra said…

A bit harsh but very good read.

March 22, 2018

Covishield controversy: How India ignored a warning voice during the pandemic

Dr Amitav Banerjee, MD * It is a matter of pride for us that a person of Indian origin, presently Director of National Institute of Health, USA, is poised to take over one of the most powerful roles in public health. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, an Indian origin physician and a health economist, from Stanford University, USA, will be assuming the appointment of acting head of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USA. Bhattacharya would be leading two apex institutions in the field of public health which not only shape American health policies but act as bellwether globally.

Growth without justice: The politics of wealth and the economics of hunger

By Vikas Meshram* In modern history, few periods have displayed such a grotesque and contradictory picture of wealth as the present. On one side, a handful of individuals accumulate in a single year more wealth than the annual income of entire nations. On the other, nearly every fourth person in the world goes to bed hungry or half-fed.

Thali, COVID and academic credibility: All about the 2020 'pseudoscientific' Galgotias paper

By Jag Jivan The first page image of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020), has gone viral on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the Galgotias University as its original product at the just-concluded AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

'Serious violation of international law': US pressure on Mexico to stop oil shipments to Cuba

By Vijay Prashad In January 2026, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security—a designation that allows the United States government to use sweeping economic restrictions traditionally reserved for national security adversaries. The US blockade against Cuba began in the 1960s, right after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 but has tightened over the years. Without any mandate from the United Nations Security Council—which permits sanctions under strict conditions—the United States has operated an illegal, unilateral blockade that tries to force countries from around the world to stop doing basic commerce with Cuba. The new restrictions focus on oil. The United States government has threatened tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or transports oil to Cuba.

When a lake becomes real estate: The mismanagement of Hyderabad’s waterbodies

By Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava* Misunderstood, misinterpreted and misguided governance and management of urban lakes in India —illustrated here through Hyderabad —demands urgent attention from Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), the political establishment, the judiciary, the builder–developer lobby, and most importantly, the citizens of Hyderabad. Fundamental misconceptions about urban lakes have shaped policies and practices that systematically misuse, abuse and ultimately erase them—often in the name of urban development.

When grief becomes grace: Kerala's quiet revolution in organ donation

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Kerala is an important model for understanding India's diversity precisely because the religious and cultural plurality it has witnessed over centuries brought together traditions and good practices from across the world. Kerala had India's first communist government, was the first state where a duly elected government was dismissed, and remains the first state to achieve near-total literacy. It is also a land where Christianity and Islam took root before they spread to Europe and other parts of the world. Kerala has deep historic rationalist and secular traditions.

The 'glass cliff' at Galgotias: How a university’s AI crisis became a gendered blame game

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan* “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information.” These were the words used in the official press release by Galgotias University following the controversy at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi. The statement came across as defensive, petty, and deeply insensitive.

The Galgotia model: How India is losing the war on knowledge

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Galgotia is the face of 'quality education' as envisioned by those who never considered education a tool for social change or national uplift — and yet this is precisely the model Narendra Modi pursued in Gujarat as Chief Minister. In the mid-eighties, when many of us were growing up, 'Nirma' became one of the most popular advertisements on Doordarshan. Whether the product was any good hardly seemed to matter.

Bangladesh goes to polls as press freedom concerns surface

By Nava Thakuria* As Bangladesh heads for its 13th Parliamentary election and a referendum on the July National Charter simultaneously on Thursday (12 February 2026), interim government chief Professor Muhammad Yunus has urged all participating candidates to rise above personal and party interests and prioritize the greater interests of the Muslim-majority nation, regardless of the poll outcomes.

Search This Blog