In Mamata Banerjee-Narendra Modi war, the PM has decided that the way to a Bengali heart is through their beloved Durga Puja.
Bengalis are the only group in India, which infamously and self-importantly divides the world into Bengalis and non-Bengalis.
The BJP’s great barrier to entry in Bengal has always been that in Bengali eyes, Syama Prasad Mukherjee notwithstanding, it’s regarded as a non-Bengali party. The founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh has a busy thoroughfare named after him in Kolkata but the party that grew out of his legacy still has not been able to shake that ‘non-Bengali’ feeling.
Now if you will pardon the mixed mythology, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks he’s found the mother of all Trojan horses to break into the Bengali bastion. He has decided that the way to a Bengali heart is through their beloved Durga Puja.
His message at his big rally in Midnapore was that Mamata Didi could not be trusted to safeguard the sanctity of Durga Puja. “Even Puja is under threat,” Modi said alleging that efforts have been made to “undermine the great traditional heritage of Bengal”. While he did not specify Durga Puja, the message was not lost on anyone.
The opening, admittedly, was provided by Mamata Banerjee herself last year.
Durga Puja immersion dates had clashed with Muharram. In calmer times, everyone would have adjusted their processions with each other. But we live in extraordinary times where a WhatsApp rumour spreads like wildfire and leads to lynchings, and ministers garland the accused out on bail. In 2016, there had been some clashes in Bengal. The West Bengal government in the name of public safety decided not to allow Durga Puja immersion after 10 pm on 30 September and on 1 October in 2017 on account of Muharram. And thereby the Trinamool government opened itself up yet again to charges of Muslim appeasement. Three PILs challenged the restrictions in the court and the judges firmly rapped the government on its knuckles.
“People have the right to practise their religious activities, whichever community they may be of, and the State cannot put restrictions unless it has concrete ground to believe that the two communities cannot live together,” the court said. Since Mamata herself had told at a public meeting that Hindus and Muslims lived together in harmony in Bengal, how could the same government suddenly claim they could not be trusted to share a road together?
That was 2017. Those Durga images have long dissolved in Bengal’s rivers. But that does not prevent politicians from trying to fish in troubled waters. The BJP has been sabre-rattling in Bengal for a while. It’s been taking out Ram Navami rallies complete with swords and trishuls, a sight hitherto unseen in Kolkata. The Trinamool countered them with their own Ram Navami rallies this year. Net result? Kolkata saw 62 Ram Navami rallies this year choking traffic everywhere.
Most Bengalis are just bemused by the Ram Navami swordplay. It’s alien to them.
The BJP knows it needs to wrap something more authentically Bengali around itself and we don’t mean Babul Supriyo. If the BJP has a few Tollywood stars, Didi has an entire galaxy. The BJP could have flooded the market with Bengalis’ beloved hilsa fish at cut-rate prices but the vegetarian purists who rule the party probably would choke on a hilsa bone. It has tried to co-opt Netaji Subhas Bose but Mamata has already anointed his great-nephew as her MP. The BJP found another grand nephew in the family tree to be its candidate but he lost the election. They released some missing Bose files. Mamata had already released a bunch herself at the Police Museum in Kolkata. The BJP could have embraced Rabindranath Tagore except some of its leaders like Kalyan Singh keep flogging the old and long disproved conspiracy theory that Jana Gana Mana is a paean to Emperor George V.
So now it’s poor Ma Durga who finds herself stuck in the great tug-of-war for Bengal.
There have already been rumblings in the battle to own Durga. Last year, the Jawed Habib beauty salon found itself under attack from the ‘troll vahini’ after they put out an innocuous advertisement showing Durga and her family enjoying some spa time under the tagline ‘Gods Too Visit JH Salon’. Habib had to put up an apology on Twitter for ‘disrespecting’ Hindu gods. Bengalis have always treated their gods as family. Pictures like that one about Durga and her family having a spa day, going for a boat ride, or playing in a rock band have been commonplace on covers of Bengali children’s magazines for years. But now in the time of manufactured outrage, they have suddenly become a hot potato.
If there is one thing goddess Durga does not need it is these self-appointed guardians-come-lately. The “great traditional heritage of Bengal” that Modi talks about includes a sense of humour about its mother goddess. It includes the sacred right to have egg rolls and mutton biryani while pandal-hopping late at night even as the rest of the country fasts for Navaratri. That’s just the way the goddess rolls in Bengal and the politicians would do well to leave her alone because as Saptarshi Chakraborty who runs the Youtube channel Bong Eats wrote (after being trolled for a Durga Puja egg roll recipe video), “Our mother is not a submissive cow. She is a fire-spewing, demon-killing badass woman who knows how to have fun.”
She has ten arms and can take care of herself, thank you very much. If Modi is still looking for a way to prove the Bengali street cred of his party, perhaps instead of Ram Navami processions, the BJP leaders could all solemnly take a public swig of Aqua Ptychotis or Carmozyme digestive tonic, so beloved of indigestion-obsessed Bengalis. That would surely warm Bengali hearts and also soothe the BJP’s heartburn.
Sandip Roy is a journalist, commentator and author.