Historical Symbols

We are used to images of the statues of former rulers being torn down, once that leader or ideology falls. Think Saddam or Stalin. Since the rulers were hated and feared by their own population, the statues were brought down with a vengeance.

The statues being brought down in the US in recent times are different. They are statues of the defeated side from the American Civil War. Ironically, those statues were put up after the American south lost the Civil War. Not just that, most of those statues were put decades after the Civil War had ended! The statues reflected the fact that while the South may have lost the war, they hadn’t changed their minds about (most) of the issues over which the war had been fought; and that they respected their leaders who had fought, even if on the losing side.

Not to be outdone by what parts of the general public want, the opposition Democrats in the US called for the removal of 10 such statues from the US Capitol building. Politicians everywhere go with the flow…

There are even calls to rename streets for the same reasons. In one case, the US Army declined saying they were named “in the spirit of reconciliation” and renaming them now “would be controversial and divisive”.

Opponents argue that such monuments and street names didn’t come up due to any spirit of reconciliation. If that were the case, they argue, they would have spurted up right after the war, not decades later. Instead, they say, the spurt happened alongside the segregation laws that reaffirmed white supremacy.

Some feel the statues and symbols should stay, as reminders of the figures who supported slavery and even seceding from the country. A la how Germany preserves some of the Nazi concentration camps even today.

Ironically, when Donald Trump tweeted against the trend of bringing down those statues, he used the same arguments that most left leaning folks cite in similar situations. Namely to get over the past; to not apply modern standards of morality to people who lived in the past; and that today, those symbols are just part of the landscape and not much else!
“Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”
And:
“The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”

You know the world is truly topsy-turvy when the left wants to bring down historical symbols and the right argues against it!

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarSeptember 5, 2017 at 7:01 PM

    Interesting blog, the detail of which we would have missed. Who is going to take the pain of presenting it to us or if by chance we see it in the paper we would have skipped it.

    Interesting because, as you said in the email, for the masses the mindset seems to be same in India and America, even though the cultures and backgrounds are believed to be different. The basic human nature broadly remains the same.

    ReplyDelete

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