Statues: Remembering to Forget?

The recent destruction of statues has succeeded in doing what the statues themselves have forgotten how to do - making us remember. Taking down Lenin’s statue makes us talk about him- something that most of us haven’t done in a long, long time. Instances of statues being brought down have often served as powerful moments in history- the visible dismantling, and in some cases disfiguring of monuments that celebrate a certain ideology or system of power has often been a sign of a liberating sense of freedom. When a hated past is finally overthrown, there is a need felt to mark the passing in some tangible way. Since the past can neither be undone nor be erased, attacking its symbols becomes the most satisfying way of signaling a change.

In this case, however, it is difficult to imagine Vladimir Lenin as a sign of anything potent in today’s Indian context. Tripura had an elected government, led by a CM who was widely admired as a honest and frugal individual, and who won 4 successive terms for himself. He has lost this time, but by a reasonably tight margin (in terms of vote share the party still managed a not insignificant 42.6%) the destruction of a statue is the hardly a sign of long- suppressed freedom. It is likelier that it is an over-the-top celebration of an unlikely victory. The attempt to convert a tight electoral victory into the triumphant overthrow of an ideology is both overblown and perhaps a little unwise for it set off a chain of such events in other parts of the country too. The trouble with attacking once potent symbols in such a fashion is that it can re-awaken dormant emotions. While Lenin is unlikely to stir too much by way of emotion, Periyar is another story. In a state where the BJP is trying hard to earn a foothold, to play this casually with Dravidian sensitivities is likely to be risky. As it is, the BJP is viewed as a North Indian party that is not sensitive enough to the aspirations of other parts of the country, and sponsoring actions of this kind are unlikely to go down well in Tamil Nadu.

The paradox is that in many ways, the statue itself is a memory device that is designed to make us forget. Or to put it more accurately, in today’s context the statue promotes amnesia rather than remembrance. The conventional understanding is that the statue is a powerful symbol that keeps memory of the great intact and allows their supporters to channelize their feeling towards their heroes. We honour the truly great with statues; we erect larger than life images that seek to inspire us through their magnificence.

Statues freeze memory on a grand scale. Greatness is captured, but as a pose. Homage is paid to the men and women in question by making their bodies monuments of achievement. The corporeal nature of the homage underlines that we are remembering the person more than her ideas. Karl Marx makes for a better statue than a copy of The Communist Manifesto; the person is after all the best way for us to remember his ideas. However, the truth is that statues do not seek to remind us of the reasons for a person’s greatness; they celebrate the mere memory of his existence. Read literally, statues serve to remind future generations that Gandhi wore Lennon glasses and Marx had a big beard, the kind hipsters wear today.

Statues erase memory by making us remember too little. They allow us to believe that we have not forgotten without putting any pressure on us to remember anything substantial. They mark our desire for memory but do not actually evoke it. And by virtue of being imposed on unwitting public spaces they invite blindness. They are debts that we repay to a forgotten time; we offload the burden of history on to the town square. With time, they become pigeon-dropping encrusted landmarks that only those new to the city notice. We settle our debt with the past, by creating something a symbol that is as timeless as it is invisible. Statues convert active debt into passive memory; by celebrating the once-greatness of the individuals, they simultaneously signify their current irrelevance.

Often, statues end up arousing negative memories rather than positive ones. They invite claimants only when they are defiled. Their role as markers of another time often becomes relevant only when a need is felt to distance oneself from that time. Lenin’s statue was at its most useful when it was toppled after the collapse of the USSR. Ditto for Saddam. Revolutions need statues to topple; stable societies find very little that is productive about them.  

The statue differs from its more contemporary avatar, the cut-out, in interesting ways. The cut-out is a two-dimensional magnification of transient greatness. It trades size for permanence. It is cinematic rather than operatic. The cut-out is to the statue what celebrity is to the truly great. At one level, the cut-out is more magnificent in its pretence but at another more realistic about its eventual mortality. It is rooted in the here-and-now, unlike the statue which changes meaning along with time.  

The statue is not the only way used to preserve memory. The names of roads, parks, public institutions, photographs on walls are all methods to signal our gratitude to the great of earlier times.  In most cases, the effect produced is similar; Mahatma Gandhi Road becomes MG Road.  Deliberate efforts to engineer memory often fail for such signs are more likely to become geography rather than history.

What the statue and other memory marking devices achieve in spite of their apparent distortions is to create an environment dotted with reference points of the past. They help create a sense of continuity by populating our present with the phosphorescent markers of our past. They are here so that in this age of the perpetual present created by media, we remain dimly aware today is a product of the past.

Passive memory gets activated when it is not allowed to fade away. Gradual extinction is a more permanent mode of erasure than overthrow. The statue torn down is a way more powerful sign today than the statue ignored. No wonder the party leadership has moved quickly to stop this kind of vandalism. The politics of the past is something the party excels in, and destroying statues is a very high-risk strategy, which could turn out very badly.

(this is a version of an article that has appeared earlier in the Times of India)