Construction of the Statue of Unity, the statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Kevadiya, Gujarat, started in 2013 and was completed in 2018. Initially there wasn’t much attention to the statue from the Leftists in India. From the beginning leftists didn’t care much for Patel, what with him being the counter to their favourite and god, Chacha Nehru. But after Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister in 2014, this statue became the centre of leftists’ hate, an eye sore that was the symbol of Modi’s ascension to power and the defeat of their ideology and the dynasty that nourished them. So for every issue that has come up since 2014, they bring up the statue and its cost as a sort of criticism of Modi. But the same leftists have themselves turned to statues as the Communist-led Kerala government in this year’s budget has allocated ₹4 crores of tax payer money to build statues to 2 politicians who died recently. That too when one of these politicians is a person convicted of corruption by the Supreme Court of India.

This is typical of Indian Leftists. Their concern for mishandling of public money doesn’t come from concern for fellow citizens. They view such issues merely as useful tools to attack their ideological adversaries. I explore this attitude in depth with examples in this vlog.

If you would rather listen to this vlog, a podcast version is available on Anchor and all major podcast services like Spotify, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Breaker and Radio Public.

Letter 13: Indian state's continuing assault on Hindu festivals, language wars in Tamil Nadu temples, temple demolitions and secularism of Jharkhand assembly – Letters from the basement

This podcast covers everything about being a Hindu in secular, socialist India. We publish a new letter here on alternate weeks discussing the intersection of culture and politics in India from a Hindu perspective. If that’s something you are interested in, please subscribe to this podcast. In this letter, continuing assault of Indian state on Hindu festivals, this time it’s Ganesha Chaturthi and Diwali; how the country remembered Malabar Hindu genocide; language battles in Tamil Nadu have reached temples in that state; Jharkhand assembly has established a new ideal for secularism; there is a pandemic of temple demolition; and Assam government comes face to face with illegal infiltrators. Welcome to the basement. Music by jorikbasov from Pixabay Website: https://lettersfrombasement.in/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frombasement

1. Letter 13: Indian state's continuing assault on Hindu festivals, language wars in Tamil Nadu temples, temple demolitions and secularism of Jharkhand assembly 27:33
2. Letter 12: Partition horrors remembrance day, Periyarist government's assault on temples in Tamil Nadu, a deep-dive into Malabar Hindu Genocide 34:35
3. Letter 11: August 15, is it really Independence Day for Hindus in India? 27:26
4. Letter 10: Right-wing, left-wing and Hindus in India 17:21
5. Letter 9: The Hindu rate of growth 13:59