Why Durga Puja’s Celebration in West Bengal This Year Was Different – The Diplomat

Amid the festive fervor that engulfs India in autumn, the jap Indian state of West Bengal is immersed within the 10-day celebration of Durga Puja.

Durga Puja, or the worship of the ten-armed goddess Durga, who slayed a demon king, symbolizes the victory of excellent over evil. It’s the greatest competition for Bengalis and for the Bengali diaspora. It’s rather more than a non secular competition and has metamorphosed into the biggest public artwork competition on this planet as properly.

Given the importance of Durga Puja within the lives of Bengalis, ruling events within the state have all the time leveraged the competition for political functions. This was the primary Durga Puja held below the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), which got here to energy in Bengal simply 5 months in the past, after defeating the regional Trinamool Congress (TMC).

This 12 months, nevertheless, the competition was within the information for all of the fallacious causes. For the primary time in Bengal, a stampede in a puja pandal (venue for worship) in north Kolkata left 19 useless and over 25 injured on October 17. The useless included 11 ladies and 5 kids; the youngest was aged seven. A pall of gloom descended upon Bengal’s largest socio-cultural celebration. Kolkata has by no means witnessed such a tragedy throughout Durga Puja.

On the night of the stampede catastrophe, there was one other shock in retailer for Kolkata. Photos of bulldozers demolishing bookstalls adjoining puja pandals in south Kolkata emerged.

For many years, leftist events had arrange bookstalls promoting Marxist literature in the course of the puja days. This time, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari declared that his authorities wouldn’t enable communist tradition to flourish. His authorities used bulldozers to flatten the stalls. In north Kolkata’s Dum Dum space, Hindutva goons vandalized a leftist-run e book stall and even tore nice classics of Bengali literature. Kolkata is legendary for its love for mental banter and books.

Though Durga Puja revolves across the worship of a Hindu goddess, in Bengal it’s a cultural phenomenon reasonably than a ritualistic-religious one. Not like North India, the place Navaratri (9 days) is noticed by means of strict fasting, prayers, consumption of solely vegetarian fare, and worship of the Mata Rani (Mom Goddess), in Bengal the reference to Durga is extra private. She is perceived as a loving daughter coming to her parental house and is subsequently pampered with the most effective meals and candy choices, together with sacrificial meat.

What makes the Durga Puja of Bengal distinctive is the pantheon of gods it consists of — Saraswati and Lakshmi, the goddesses of studying and wealth, respectively – thought to be Durga’s kids together with the male gods, Ganesh and Kartik. Her annual arrival on earth, accompanied by her kids, is the rationale behind the celebration. This celebration is marked by cultural dance, music, theatrical performances, publication of literary magazines, new garments, revelry, and feasting. It’s an inclusive, secular strategy to an ostensibly spiritual competition, which the Hindutva-dominated North Indian psyche can not comprehend.

Beneath former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of the TMC (2011-2026), the competition expanded each in scale and funds. Banerjee inaugurated hundreds of group pujas yearly in Kolkata, patronizing neighborhood golf equipment that organized the competition. Organizers would unleash their creativity and artistry by means of the pandal decorations and portrayal of Durga. Often called “theme pujas,” pandals depicted topical points starting from social issues to up to date topics like local weather change, and even summary ideas.

The dizzying creativity within the artwork installations attracted home and international vacationers to Bengal in the course of the puja season. As per a British Council research in 2021, the Durga Puja artistic financial system was price round $4.53 billion, contributing 2.5 % of the state’s GDP.

Bengal’s Durga Puja even earned the distinguished UNESCO tag for being an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” in 2021. In its quotation, UNESCO said: “Durga Puja is seen as the most effective occasion of the general public efficiency of faith and artwork, and as a thriving floor for collaborative artists and designers.” Banerjee thought-about the UNESCO recognition a serious achievement of her authorities and even began a Durga Puja Carnival to showcase the festivities.

A number of ministers of Banerjee’s TMC turned synonymous with their neighborhood pujas, which acquired political clout and prominence. Even distinguished TMC leaders like former mayor Farhid (Bobby) Hakim, a Muslim, have been well-known for his or her patronage of the Durga Puja. In actual fact, this secular celebration of Durga Puja, the place Muslims additionally take part, is what rankled the Hindutva organizations.  The TMC below Banerjee was recognized for its secular credentials and its patronage of festivals of all main religions, be it Durga Puja, Christmas or Eid.

In distinction, the BJP has all the time harped on retaining the purity of the “sanatan dharma” (actually, common fact, i.e., Hinduism). It has all the time inspired sectarian and communal politics with scant regard for minorities. Even earlier than it got here to energy in Bengal, the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had stoked the vegetarian versus non-vegetarian debate, projecting the Bengali custom of providing meat to Durga as an aberration.

Not surprisingly, a lot earlier than the competition, Adhikari issued a stern warning to puja organizers with a listing of dos and don’ts, together with strict adherence to spiritual rituals. Organizers have been additionally given diktats to not take artistic liberties with the idol and the pandal in any manner that may defile the sanctity of the worship. Earlier Durga Puja pandal themes like taboos surrounding menstruation have been anathema to the BJP authorities.

It was apparent that the BJP authorities in Bengal is intent on stripping Durga Puja of its cultural, secular, and inventive character and imposing a inflexible ritualistic norm of worship in its stead. The state administration was extra targeted on such extraneous points reasonably than fundamentals like making certain crowd administration; this important lapse led to the stampede on October 17. The Telegraph newspaper noticed that the Adhikari authorities had changed police personnel, who prior to now have been lauded for his or her environment friendly crowd management measures, with a brand new group of inexperienced officers.

Even the Left Entrance authorities, which dominated Bengal for 34 years (1977 to 2011) and was avowedly atheist, by no means interfered or restricted the festive celebrations of Durga Puja. Reasonably, it termed the puja as a “sharad utsav” (autumnal competition) and took part in it by establishing bookstalls on the venues.

The BJP’s victory in pluralistic Bengal stunned many. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Dwelling Minister Amit Shah had been determined to oust the proud Banerjee, who had publicly challenged the prime minister a number of instances. Subsequently, Durga Puja 2026 was, to many Bengalis, an try by the BJP to erase the TMC’s contributions to the Durga Puja spectacle.

Quickly after forming the Bengal authorities, BJP leaders changed TMC politicians heading distinguished puja committees throughout Kolkata. Banerjee’s authorities used to offer round $1,000 to puja committees. This 12 months, the BJP authorities offered a grant of $1,000 in addition to free electrical energy to every puja committee throughout Bengal.

The BJP, which valorizes the deity Ram, celebrates the Dussehra competition as Ram’s conquest of the demon, Ravana. In Bengal, the get together needed to make an uncomfortable compromise; it needed to worship goddess Durga, and in the way in which Bengalis have a good time the competition.

In step with its communally divisive agenda, Chief Minister Adhikari introduced on Wednesday that solely those that consider in “sanatan dharma” can be allowed to the touch the Durga idols throughout immersion within the river. The opposition has accused him of advocating untouchability.  However Adhikari is unperturbed.