Since violent protests and vandalism started in the USA after George Floyd’s death, a lot of India ‘secular liberals’ have been dreaming of similar chaos in India. They often share their fantasies on social media to instigate people to get involved in vandalism and crimes.
In the latest, one Rashmi Nair, who as per her Twitter bio, is an assistant professor in Ashoka University, took to twitter to fantasise about the destruction of the statue of Manu, who according to Hindu faith, is the progenitor of humans and the scholar who wrote the legal scripture ‘Manusmriti’.
Quoting a tweet about the toppling of Christopher Columbus’s bust outside the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, Rashmi tweeted, “Manu, are you scared? You should be” and attached the image of Manu’s statue located at the premises of the Rajasthan High Court.
https://twitter.com/RashmiNairPhD/status/1271284584668258304?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwFurthermore, she even shared the details of where the statue is positioned and justified her sly suggestion of vandalising the statue. Nair shared an article published on ‘The Print’ which called upon the people of the country to take down the statue of Manu just like protestors in Bristol toppled the statue of a slave trader.
Nair’s oblique call to bring the statue of Manu down did not sit well with the Twitter users who alleged that the Ashoka University professor is calling for open vandalism and violence.
Statues of Marx, Lenin, Engels
Quoting Nair’s tweet, one of the Twitter users highlighted the irony of having statues of Lenin, Marx and Engels in at least three cities in India and who presided over the killings of at least 100 million people.
https://twitter.com/db_is_db/status/1271329793808584707?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwAnother user asked Rajasthan Police to take action against Nair for instigating people to demolish the pubic property and tagged BJP MP Rajyavardhan Rathore to take cognisance of the call for vandalism by the professor in his state.
https://twitter.com/OnlyNakedTruth/status/1271324648676790272?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe Print endorses vandalism and destruction of property
An article published in The Print titled–”Bristol brought down slave trader’s statue. This is what India should do with Manu statue” authored by a certain Dilip Mandal endorsed the demolition of Manu’s statue on lines of how slave trader Edward Colston’s statue was taken down by the Black Lives Matter movement that swept Bristol.
The author expresses regret in the article that the said statue perched outside the Rajasthan High Court has not been toppled in the last 31 years.
In what could be termed as a direct incitement of violence and destruction of public property, Mandal further discussed where should the statue of Manu be disposed once it is toppled from its place. “When Dalits and women tear down the statue of Manu, should its final destination be the Man Sagar Lake in Jaipur, like Colston’s was in Avon river?” Mandal questions in the article.
Mandal than defends his call for vandalism against the statue of Manu by besmirching him as the “epitome of casteist bigotry”. By vilifying Manu, the author attempts to rationalise his incitement to violence and demolition of public property while simultaneously whipping up a groundswell of negative sentiments against one of the most ancient scriptures of the Hindu faith.
Liberal-secular anger on the Manu statue
The Manu statue is located on the premises of the Rajasthan HC. Over the years, it has been attacked and vandalised a number of times. The Manusmriti is one of the oldest documentation of drafted law, dated between the second century CE. It is one of the most revered Hindu Dharmashastras and its contents are hated by most ‘feminists’, and communists, who call it Brahminical and misogynist.
There have also been petitions and a court order to remove the statue but the attempt was halted by local VHP leaders. The statue was designed by Rajasthan artist late Shri Sumahendra Sharma. The statue was commissioned by Padam Kumar Jain in 1989, who was the then-president of the Rajasthan Higher Judicial Officers’ Association.