A CLASH OF TEMPLE BELLS

From organising Kashistyle Ganga aartis along the Hooghly in Kolkata to building replicas of Vaishno Devi and Puri Jagannath, the Trinamool Congress has in recent years striven to match every step of its main adversary, the BJP, in bursts of demonstrative Hinduism.

- Arkamoy Datta Majumdar

Promoting religious tourism in West Bengal is only a virtuous byproduct here—the primary realm being targeted is political. That’s precisely why, with the 2024 Lok Sabha polls drawing near, the state is seeing a fresh spurt of action.

On December 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will land in Kolkata to attend a widely publicised event where a hundred thousand people will recite hymns from the Bhagavad Gita. But a fortnight before that, two TMC leaders were found attending an event modelled exactly on those lines, if on a smaller scale, at the Jagannath temple in Mahesh, Hooghly district. As if on cue, an association of Brahmins, the Paschim Banga Rajya Sanatan Brahmin Trust, approached Kolkata mayor and minister Firhad Hakim to seek the state government’s assistance in organising a Chandipaath—a recitation of hymns to goddess Durga. Incidentally, the trust had protested the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act in 2019.