The problem with toppling statues
Instead of pushing historical figures off their pedestals, consider what Singapore did during its bicentennial year to deal with Stamford Raffles’ place in its history.
THEY were once feted as pioneers, leaders who created empires and powerful nations, worthy characters of worship by their successors. Some of their statues stood on their pedestals for centuries in city squares and other central locations, seen by millions of passers-by and pointed to reverentially by parents and teachers of successive generations of schoolchildren.
Now, however, the statues are being toppled.
And this is not just the fate of a relatively unknown individual such as Edward Colston, a wealthy 17th-century trader whose statue stood for 125 years in the heart of the English city of Bristol, only to be ripped out now by demonstrators objecting to his role in the slave trade.
And it is not just a single episode in a corner of England. Neither Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in the United States nor his British counterpart James Cook in Australia is spared as demonstrators and activists around the world agitate for statues to be removed.
Even Winston Churchill, Britain’s venerated wartime leader, rated in every national poll as the greatest Briton to have ever lived, is now endangered – his statue opposite Big Ben in the heart of London was defaced with obscenities.
According to promoters of this wave of destruction, the age of colonialism, racial oppression and war which many of these people – invariably men, of course – stood for should not be merely condemned, but erased; their statues must not be allowed to stand, for merely having them upright is an insult to the memory of their victims. Most of the activists promoting this destruction are not hooligans; they genuinely find the statues offensive.
But sincerely held opinions can still be dead wrong. For the reality remains that the mass destruction of statues and images – whether because they represented gods no longer acceptable or were deemed pagan or religious – is a recurring theme in history on every continent. And such destructive movements never produce any good.
Besides, there are better ways of dealing with such emotions. Singapore handles thorny historic questions without violence while not compromising on moral principles.
There is no doubt that if you are a black person in the United States walking down famed Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, lined with statues of Confederate leaders who started a civil war to defend their “right” to own slaves, you would not only be deeply hurt but you’d also be wondering why such people are still standing on plinths in the 21st century.
The same applies to British black people going past statues of those who created the empire, monuments still adorned with praising captions such as a “The Conqueror of Natal” or the “Victor of Magdala”.
And what is one to say to Belgian citizens of African origins passing daily by the statue of King Leopold
II who not merely colonised the Congo but also used the colony as his private property, sanctioning the murder and mutilation of millions? Why is he still standing astride his huge horse, still supposedly revered as “King of the Belgians”?
Symbol of change
Undoubtedly, the act of toppling statues has a huge symbolic effect – it is a visible sign of radical change, of not only the collapse of a slab of marble or bronze but also of a political system.
The first thing revolutionaries in France did after toppling King Louis XVI in 1792 was to topple or melt down statues of his ancestors. American revolutionaries did the same with statues of the British king. So did the people of Eastern Europe, after they shook off communism in the late 1980s; the first to go were the statues of communist dictators. And the most iconic image of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 remains, of course, the sight of Saddam Hussein’s statue collapsing.
On every occasion, the message was unmistakable: a decisive, sudden and irrevocable break with the past.
Still, those currently pushing for the destruction of monuments are operating in a very different political environment, one in which the decision to remove a statue can be made through the normal political process rather than through violence. And although the current demonstrators claim to represent a new and refreshing mood of change, the truth is that controversial monuments have already been subjected to political debates for a long period of time.
Take Colston, the English slave owner whose statue was first toppled in this current wave of violence. Over the past two years, Bristol’s local authorities have been discussing the possibility of adding to Colston’s statue an explanation about his involvement in slavery, one which would present Colston in a different light and would have replaced the existing plaque which praises him as “virtuous and wise”.
However, the local authorities could not agree on what the plaque
A group of leading Asian newspapers working toward improving coverage of Asian affairs.
should say, and Mayor Marvin Rees decided he had more important matters to deal with.
“I could have expended a lot of political capital on a statue, entering into a symbolic act. But that would not have actually fed, clothed, or paid any bills for people in Bristol,” said Rees.
Perhaps his decision was wrong. But that does not give a few hundred demonstrators the right to impose their own decision by force, especially since nobody could accuse Bristol’s local leader of being unaware of race sensitivities. For Rees is Britain’s first directly elected black mayor. In effect, therefore, those who toppled the statue in Bristol decided their views mattered more and should be imposed on others.
Complex figures
The movement to destroy monuments also tends to promote a single view of past personalities, a – no pun intended – black-and-white perspective in which people are either wholly good or entirely bad, and therefore should be remembered or expunged from history.
And that’s simply nonsense, for most historic figures have their achievements and warts, and the question is one of balance.
It is a fact, for instance, that Churchill had a dim view of some “natives” in the colonies; he referred to Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, as a “half-naked fakir”.
Churchill was also behind the carpet bombing of rebellious Iraqi tribes in the 1920s and German cities in the 1940s and, of course, a horrible famine in India.
Incidentally, the British leader is not much loved in Eastern Europe either, for his part in consigning the eastern part of the continent to Soviet domination.
Yet none of this should obscure the fact that Churchill’s leadership defeated a much bigger evil, a Nazi monster for whom the extermination of people as a race was an article of faith. It is interesting to note that neither Indians nor Germans nor East Europeans are among those seeking to deface Churchill’s statue in London, and some of those who did engage in vandalism had little idea of who Churchill really was: “I have not met Churchill personally,” explained a young demonstrator at the site, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Churchill died in 1965.
The same applies to the campaigns against Cook in Australia or Columbus in the United States. Undoubtedly, their so-called “discovery” of Australia and the Americas heralded the start of horrible colonial episodes. But it also transformed the world, expanding knowledge and economic progress.
Furthermore, their failings – and the crimes committed by the colonialists who came after them – are now widely acknowledged and documented. The celebration of Columbus Day in the United States is now increasingly challenged, while the Latin Americans have long marked Oct 12, the day of Columbus’ landing in the Americas, as the “Day of the Race”, the seminal event where different races were forced to mingle. So what purpose is achieved by pulling their statues down, when their significance and their historic context are already being reinterpreted?
Besides, where does one stop in the quest to settle scores? Those who consider Churchill a monster because of the way he treated India may be interested to know that a petition is now making the rounds in Britain to remove a statue of Gandhi from the English city of Leicester. More than 5,000 have signed the petition accusing one of the world’s greatest humanitarians of “well-documented anti-black racism” – a reference to his comments about Africans during his early years in South Africa.
Is there a way of satisfying the real sense of historic injustice which some people feel about past historic figures without descending into wanton vandalism? There certainly is, as Singapore has shown.
Recasting history
Sir Stamford Raffles was neither a democrat nor a believer in a multiracial society. So upon Singapore’s independence, the easiest thing would have been to have him removed; that is what many former British colonies did to statues of their old founders or rulers.
But instead, he was set into a new context, recast for a new Singapore and, last year, as part of the Singapore Bicentennial, Raffles’ statue was joined by those of four other historic leaders of local communities: Sang Nila Utama, Tan Tock Seng, Munshi Abdullah and Naraina Pillai.
A similar approach was taken to the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, which had its British coat of arms removed from the facade to be replaced by Singapore’s, but recently had the old British crown restored to its roof.
None of these suggest for one moment either a nostalgia for empire or an inability to deal with past historic wrongs. Indeed, it is precisely the opposite: They suggest a confidence in a nation’s ability to take a critical look at its history and recast it for today’s generations.
And the same should be done in the United States and Europe: reinterpreting the significance of old monuments or augmenting them with new ones, rather than simply trying to destroy them in an effort to erase the past.
Barack Obama, the former US president and the first AfricanAmerican to break through what was considered an insurmountable barrier, recently warned those who sought to make change by being “as judgmental as possible about other people” and by assuming that that’s enough. “If all you’re doing is casting stones,” said Obama, “you’re probably not going to get that far”. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network