Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Monday accused Communist parties of trying hard to destroy Indian culture and said the people of his state had discarded that ideology, The Economic Times reported. Deb claimed the Communists had created goons instead of cadres and wanted to choke people’s voices.

Speaking at a conference of the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana in Guwahati, the chief minister said: “The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is not trying to saffronise the country, it is the communists who have unsuccessfully tried to make the whole world red.”

The Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana is the history wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Deb likened communists to the Mughals and the British rulers, who he said had unsuccessfully tried to destroy Indian culture, IANS reported.

After the conference, Deb wrote on Twitter that he had spoken about “how in order to promote their Communist ideology, the Left parties over the years systematically removed rich and real history of our motherland from educational curriculum”.

In October, Deb had said that school textbooks in Tripura teach only about former Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, and had announced that a new syllabus centred on Indian leaders will be introduced soon.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had come to power with a simple majority in Tripura in March, routing the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had ruled the state for 25 years.