The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has opened a fresh debate in Bengal by seeking to influence how Durga Puja should be celebrated. At a discussion in Kolkata's Salt Lake area attended by puja organisers, priests and members of the Forum for Durgotsav, the organisation called for the festival to follow 'ancient Sanatan traditions and scriptural norms' rather than become a display of 'show-off'.

The intervention is significant because Durga Puja in Bengal has never been only a religious ritual. It is worship, art, community life and public culture rolled into one. The VHP, however, appears keen to draw a sharper boundary around the festival — and, in doing so, risks overlooking precisely what makes Kolkata's Durga Puja distinctive.

Its proposed slogan is: 'Religion is personal, and festivals belong to the respective faith', a direct challenge to the phrase associated with former chief minister Mamata Banerjee: 'Religion is personal, but festivals belong to everyone.' The latter became a political expression of Bengal's tradition of people across communities participating in Durga Puja.

The VHP argues that such an idea is unrealistic. 'This simply does not happen,' it said, claiming that 'no religion operates this way, nor does any religion endorse such a concept'. But that argument misses the particular social character of Bengal's Puja. People from different communities participating in the festival does not mean they are being asked to adopt another religion. For many Bengalis, that openness is precisely what makes the festival culturally distinctive.

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© National Herald