In Durga Puja 2023, Kolkata’s biggest hit was a political project – an imposing replica of Ram Temple as the pandal of Santosh Mitra Square in North Kolkata, where Jai Shree Ram rented the air. As evident from Kolkata Police’s updates on crowds in the major pujas, this pandal required the highest ‘wait time’ throughout the five days of the festival – ranging from 25 minutes to 45 minutes.
“The crowd at Santosh Mitra Square makes it evident that Ram exists in our (Bengalis’) hearts,” says Bengal BJP veteran Samik Bhattacharya. He was evidently referring to the allegation that Ram is a deity mostly alien to Bengal whom the Hindu nationalists are trying to impose on Bengali Hindu culture.
Such replicas of famous structures and architecture are common in West Bengal’s Durga Puja pandals, more so in Kolkata. Over the years, Kolkata has seen from Gujarat’s Somnath Temple and Akshardham to the pyramids of Egypt, the Vatican City, Japanese pagodas, the Hogwarts Castle, and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
Given that the year the movie Titanic became a global hit, 1998, the FD Block’s Puja in Kolkata’s eastern extension of Salt Lake had a 150 ft long, 90 ft high replica of the ship, and that in 1999, the biggest crowd puller was the recreation of the scene at Gaisal train accident site, the choice of the coming Ram Temple as a theme is not surprising at all. Any puja committee could have chosen it.
But the politics in this was not the choice but how it was implemented and the atmosphere it created. Santosh Mitra Square is known for creating awe-inspiring pandals. In 2002, when the Union government decided to remove the headquarters of Eastern Rail from Kolkata, they lodged a protest by showing a divided Eastern Railway building. Their 160 ft high, 140 ft long, and 80 ft wide replica of the Indian Navy’s INS Vikrant was a hugely popular theme as well.
The puja’s main organiser has been Pradip Ghosh, a veteran politician of north Kolkata who had been with the Congress and the Trinamool Congress before joining the BJP a few years ago. His son, Sajal, is now the main organiser. Sajal is also one of the only 10 BJP corporators in Kolkata.
It would be wrong to assume only BJP or Hindutva supporters visited the pandal. In Bengal’s pujas, any awe-inspiring theme or implementation can draw crowds. The politics was the atmosphere that they got during their visit.
At the pandal venue, Ghosh and other Hindutva organisers were seen and heard constantly chanting Jai Shree Ram using loudspeakers and urging the visitors to repeat, just as Hindu nationalists do during their political programmes. All this sloganeering was, of course, happening in Hindi.
According to a senior BJP leader of West Bengal, the success of the Santosh Mitra Square experiment has shown them a new path to increase their influence over Durga Puja.
“Over the past few years, our leaders have repeatedly criticised the theme-oriented pujas, the secularisation of our religious event, and the lack of devotion due to the change of the very character of the event into a common festival. Our approach did not help us increase our base among the Bengalis. Now, we can see that we can do better by using theme pujas to spread our ideology instead of blanket opposition to them,” the leader tells Outlook.
