Statues: A hero's memoir or dark page in history?

In Spain 1975, dictator Francisco Franco died after years of ill health. Political repression and promotion of patriarchy. Soon, all his statues were removed.

In Germany 1945, when Hitler's dictatorship came to a dramatic end. Germany got rid of all Nazi symbols. TheSwastika in Nuremberg was one of them.

The job was not too tough. They say Hitler was against statues. They are for the dead, he would say. But when Hitler died, the Germans wanted to build none. And there were not too many to destroy. Ukraine was not half as fortunate.

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It had to topple 5,500 structures when it embarked on the journey to get rid of all of Lenin's statutes. Sometimes leaders did not even have to bite the dust for their statues to fall.

In Egypt 2011, the flames of hatred engulfed many of president Hosni Mubarak's symbols.

But who gets to define hate? And whose hate?

There are nearly 1.4 billion people in India and there are that many versions of hate.

The United States has almost 329 million definitions of hate. If all of them were to be taken into account there would be no structures standing.

Here is an estimate,

771, that's just the number of confederate statues in the US include symbols and the number becomes 1,741.

60, that's how many statues protesters in the UK Want to take down

Indian cities are filled with imperial statues and structures. Mughal monuments spread across its land. There are forts, British buildings, the Parliament building, the country's railway system. These are all symbols of India's past.

Not all of them are heritage, some of them are symbols of hate.

But how much of history can someone erase and how far will one go?

Alternatively, let these symbols be. Let them be a reminder of history. One, that no one cannot afford to repeat. Let them remind people of the heroes they do not want. The atrocities we cannot be silent spectators too.

The Gregorian Dictum calls statues, the books of the illiterate. They are the prism to the past. But if the past starts interfering with the present. And comes in the way of the future.