Durgapur (Bengal): During the night of August 26, a life-size stone statue of Jawaharlal Nehru, installed behind a primary school on Harshabardhan Road in Durgapur, one of eastern India’s major industrial cities, was uprooted with the help of a crane and dumped in a nearby bush.For many residents of Durgapur, Nehru’s memory is closely associated with the city’s industrial history and its emergence as a major industrial hub.The following day, protests took place. Eventually, the authorities retrieved the statue from the bush and reinstalled it at the very spot from where it had been removed.Yet, despite the uproar, police have so far failed to identify or arrest anyone in connection with the incident.Locals have alleged that the vandalism could not have taken place without political patronage.This is the latest in a series of statue vandalisms and removals in Bengal since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. A statue of Lenin was vandalised in Jangipur of Murshidabad. At Vidyasagar University in Medinipur, portraits of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and Rabindranath Tagore were destroyed. In Raniganj, a statue of labour icon Rahul Sankrityayan was removed. In south Kolkata, the arm of a statue of Netaji Subas Chandra Bose was broken.DurgapurAcross the industrial city of Durgapur, statues of some of India’s most well known political, social, cultural and intellectual figures stand at almost every major intersection. From Mahatma Gandhi, Swami Vivekananda, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Kazi Nazrul Islam to Khudiram Basu, Bidhan Chandra Ray, Lenin, Karl Marx, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Joyti Basu – the city’s landscape bears the imprint of generations.Many of these statues were installed by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) in the Durgapur industrial township during the 1960s, when the city was taking the shape of one of India’s major industrial centres.The Jawaharlal Nehru statue at its original location. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.On occasions, people have gather around these statues to commemorate the lives and contributions of these figures, turning these public spaces into sites of remembrance and reflection.It was during the same period that SAIL installed a life-size statue of Jawaharlal Nehru inside the premises of a local primary school on Harshabardhan Road in the Benachity area of Durgapur.Around 25 kilometres west of Durgapur railway station, Harshavardhan Road runs past the crossroads of Benachity. The primary school is now closed. The spot where the statue once stood is now part of an institute known as Sri Sri Gyan Mandir, run by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living brand.On August 27, the BJP MLA from Durgapur East, Chadrashekhar Banerjee, held a Rakhi festival at the premises. People noticed that the Nehru statue was missing. Once the news spread, questions began to emerge as to how the MLA, who would have known that a Nehru statue had stood there for nearly 60 years, did not notice its absence.On August 28, several members of the Congress went to the school premises and found that both the statue and its pedestal had disappeared. “We began searching for it. Around 200 feet away, in a bush, we found Nehru’s statue lying broken and covered in mud,” said Debesh Chakraborty, president of the Purba Bardhaman wing of the party.A Congress rally in Durgapur demanding the restoration of Nehru’s statue and the arrest of those responsible. Photo: Madhu Sudan Chatterjee.According to Chakraborty, the Congress workers cleaned the damaged statue at the spot before approaching the Durgapur police station and the Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO).They asked that the statue be immediately restored to its original location, the incident be properly investigated and those responsible, punished.Chakrabarty directly alleged that such an act could not have taken place without the backing of the BJP, the ruling party in the state. He referred to allegations surrounding the vandalisation of statues of several eminent personalities elsewhere and claimed that such incidents had never occurred in Durgapur before.Under mounting pressure from the National Congress and local residents, the administration eventually reinstalled Nehru’s statue at its original location on August 30.But questions remain. No one has, so far, been arrested in connection with the incident. “How can such a huge statue be removed without a crane?’’ Chakrabarty asked. He pointed out that the area remains largely unlit at night.The Congress has repeatedly urged the administration to examine CCTV footage from the two roads leading towards the site. “But the administration is not doing that,’’ Chakrabarty stated to The Wire.BJP MLA and administration respond When The Wire contacted Chadrashekhar Banerjee, BJP MLA from Durgapur East, over the uprooting of Nehru’s statue, he categorically denied any involvement of the BJP in the incident. “There is no connection between the BJP and this incident. No one from our party was involved in it,’’ Banerjee said. Instead, he alleged that the statue had been uprooted as a result of infighting within the Congress. According to the BJP MLA, Congress worker deliberately removed the statue in order to draw media attention to the party.When this allegation was brought to the notice of Debesh Chakrabarty, he dismissed it as a “ridiculous argument’’. “There is no factional infighting in our party. Why would the Congress destroy Pandit Nehru’s statue?’’ Chakrabarty asked.Meanwhile, Ankita Agarwal, the SDO of Durgapur, told this reporter that the administration had restored Nehru’s statue to its original location. She said that the police are investigating the incident to determine who was responsible for the initial act.