After the electoral defeat of the Communist Party (CPI-M) in the northeastern Indian state of Tripura, a crowd of BJP militants, the center-right party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who won the elections, went to the city of Belonia with a bulldozer and knocked down a statue of Lenin that had stood on College Square for five years. Singing the traditional 'Bharat Mata ki jai', a hymn to Indian Mother Earth, dozens of people celebrated the event and a spokesperson told the media that the statue had been demolished "by people who celebrated the end of the oppression of left". For its part, the leaders of the CPI-M, who had governed Tripura for 25 years, replied indignantly that the gesture was a typical example of "communism-phobia". “Eyewitnesses, underlined the party secretary in Belonia, Taps Datta, told me that after the overthrow of the statue, the BJP militants removed Lenin's head from the body, using it for a football match.
