Which Hinduism is followed in India? CR Park fish shop video raises a bigger question

The CR Park video taps into a growing tension: how far should personal habits, dietary or otherwise, be shaped by the dominant religious mood of the day?

Fish vendors in Chittaranjan Park | Photo: Krishan Murari/ThePrint

A video circulating on social media has once again stirred the uneasy waters of everyday communal tension in India. A group of saffron-clad men can be seen threatening a fish seller at Market No. 1 in Chittaranjan Park, reportedly demanding that the shop be shut down because of its proximity to a temple. Their tone is not of negotiation—it’s of instruction, bordering on warning. The incident may have remained a local flashpoint, but it drew national attention when Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra shared the clip, accompanied by a scathing remark: “Do we have to eat dhoklas and chant Jai Shree Ram thrice a day?”

While The Times of India and The Hindu reported on the incident, the Bharatiya Janata Party was quick to dismiss the opposition’s claims, calling the video “false and fabricated” and denying that any of its supporters were involved in threatening fish vendors in Chittaranjan Park—a neighbourhood known for its strong Bengali identity and culture of fish consumption. But perhaps the more important question is not whether the video is real or doctored. The real concern lies elsewhere—in the creeping idea that religious sentiment can be used to police personal choices.

Policing dietary habits 

The idea that meat shops should remain shut during Navaratri to avoid hurting Hindu sentiments is hardly new. Over the years, several BJP MLAs across different states have demanded similar restrictions, framing them as a way of “respecting culture and tradition” rather than coercion. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the Yogi Adityanath-led government issued an order to close all meat shops on Chaitra Ram Navami (6 April) and enforce a ban on meat sales within a 500-metre radius of religious places throughout the nine-day festival. It’s this pattern—where administrative decisions echo religious expectations—that forms the backdrop to the Chittaranjan Park controversy. Whether or not the video in question is proven authentic, it taps into a growing tension: how far should personal habits, dietary or otherwise, be shaped by the dominant religious mood of the day?

What’s interesting in all this is that even Muslim voices—like Congress MP Imran Masood and cleric Chaudhary Ifraheem Husain—have come out in support of the idea that meat shops be shut during Navratri. It is postured as respecting Hindu sentiments. That says something about the broader willingness, at least in words, to accommodate religious feelings. But when something like the CR Park controversy breaks out, it also brings another reality to the surface—that Hindu religious practice is not the same everywhere.

While states like Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra observe Navratri with fasting and abstaining from meat, that’s not the experience across the country. In West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, Tripura and some parts of Bihar and Jharkhand—people eat non-veg during Navratri. There’s no ban on meat, fish, etc., and no sweeping sense of abstinence. In Bengal, fish is part of the bhog offered to the goddess on Dashami. So the idea that certain foods hurt religious sentiments isn’t as simple as it’s often made out to be. Whose sentiment are we talking about? And whose version of Hinduism should be respected?

While people’s personal dietary choices deserve respect, I’ve never quite understood why others need to follow their rules. That logic has always puzzled me—whether it’s meat bans during Hindu festivals or restrictions in some Islamic countries on eating in public during Ramzan to avoid offending those who are fasting. For me, it’s simple: if you’re fasting to please your God, then the test of devotion is yours. If seeing someone else eating shakes your resolve, maybe the problem isn’t them—it’s that your faith needs to be stronger. Respect doesn’t mean compliance. You can honour someone’s belief without being forced to alter your life around it. 

Tolerance in Hinduism

If the CR Park video is real, then the issue isn’t just about one market or one group of men—it points to something deeper: whose version of Hinduism gets to be followed, and who gets to decide? What I’ve always admired about Hinduism is the space it offers—this quiet, unspoken allowance for difference. Its openness, its flexibility, its deep tolerance. There is no single way of being Hindu. Rituals vary across states—and yet, there’s a quiet understanding that all of it still belongs.

This ability to hold many truths at once, or to honour different expressions of faith without growing rigid, is something I often wish my own community reflected on more seriously. The tendency to gatekeep, to police one another’s faith, to argue over who is or isn’t a “true Muslim”—it chips away at us. Maybe strength doesn’t lie in enforcing sameness, but in allowing room for belief to breathe, even when it doesn’t look the same across the board.

This is something worth saving, worth preserving. The tolerance for diversity within Hinduism isn’t just a cultural trait—it’s a protective umbrella. One that, knowingly or not, stretches over everyone who lives under it. It’s this openness that allows space for all minorities to breathe. And if we lose that, we don’t just lose a tradition—we lose the quiet understanding that allowed us to coexist, even when everything else around us threatened to pull us apart.

Amana Begam Ansari is a columnist, writer, TV news panelist. She runs a weekly YouTube show called ‘India This Week by Amana and Khalid’. She tweets @Amana_Ansari. Views are personal.

(Edited by Ratan Priya)