BJP in Bengal are finding Goddess Saraswati an easier bet than Lord Ram to woo voters
Hindu Gods and Goddesses are at call. Well, almost at beck and call, courtesy the BJP and the Trinamool Congress, which are evoking the 333 crore of Hindu deities to prove and establish their brand of Hindutva as the true one.
Reason: Mamata Banerjee’s six years of minority appeasement politics has created a space for the majority nursing a taken-for-granted feeling. Realising this, the BJP in Bengal is going all out to woo the Hindu voters. And the easiest route to do so is to piggy-ride on religion.
The BJP leaders are invoking Goddess Saraswati or the goddess of learning as their deity for Hindu jagran in Bengal. Choosing Saraswati in Bengal is interesting since Bengalis take pride in being intellectually and culturally rich and superior, and the Goddess is revered and worshipped in almost every household with hopes that children will be blessed with knowledge, wisdom and artistic talent.
The saffron party, which call upon Ram at the drop of hat in the Hindi heartland, is consciously foregrounding Saraswati and Durga in Bengal, which swears by the mother Goddess or the Goddess of power. With the Ram Janmabhoomi and Babri Masjid issue still a thorn in the Bengali intellectual psyche, Saraswati is a safe option for the party.
So BJP state president Dilip Ghosh has announced that all party programmes in the state will begin with Saraswati Vandana. The BJP, however, has reasons behind projecting Saraswati.
In 2015 and 2016, some schools in Nadia district were stopped from celebrating Saraswati Puja, which is an annual affair in educational institutions. According to the locals, a particular school in Tehatta came under the ire of a particular community because the authorities had refused to let out the premises for their festival.
The tussle over the festival took an ugly turn leading to that particular school being closed for three months. The administration initially did not react, allowing the tension to dissipate by itself.
However, the indifferent attitude of the police, coupled with some muscle flexing from the leaders, led to a massive Hindu uprising in the area and locals, without any political banner, mobbed the police station and obstructed the national highway for one-and-a-half hour to draw public attention.
The government was forced to take some stern action arresting members of both the communities but by then, the BJP got the message — a strong Hindu consolidation was happening in Nadia, North 24 Parganas. Cashing in on that incident and the general mood of the majority feeling slighted, the BJP is going overboard campaigning how Hindus in Bengal are finding it difficult to practise their customs, tradition and even religion.
Amit Shah, while touring Bengal on April 24-26 slammed Mamata Banerjee for pursuing politics of appeasement. “Here, people have to move court for permission for immersion of Durga Puja idols and for organising Saraswati puja,” he reiterated in political programmes.
In a meet with the city’s intellectuals, Shah also stressed that the party’s major programmes will be launched on the Saraswati Puja day.
“The idea was to keep the issue of Saraswati Puja alive in the public memory. Moreover, by choosing Goddess Saraswati, the BJP is trying to strike a balance, a middle path, which will be acceptable to all Hindus, even those who are sceptical about chanting Ram,” said Biswanath Chakrabarty, political science professor of Rabindra Bharati University.
Moreover, the image of Saraswati perfectly blends with the BJP’s ideology and its constant endeavour to respect, revive and restore Hindu tradition, classical art and culture. Though Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti organised by the BJP saw massive support in Bengal, the saffron party is consciously trying to explore unexplored areas, unchartered courses, which will have wider acceptability among the majority community in Bengal.
Pitted against this, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is also engaged in an aggressive campaign to establish her Hindu lineage, Hindu upbringing. “They are talking of Ram, Ram Navami as if they have exclusive rights on them. The Ram, they are talking about, is Ram — the one, who was Ravana’s friend. Our Ram stands for tolerance, love,” she tried to drive home that BJP’s icon Ram has shades of grey unlike the Ram Hindus worship as the symbol of good vanquishing the evil.
“Questions are being raised about my birth, my gender: whether I am male, female or a eunuch. Just think of their audacity,” Mamata Banerjee is reeling off names of Hindu deities, reciting shlokas of Devi Durga, Chandi and Kali. She is desperate to tug at the sentiments of the majority, who might be feeling spurned by her overt display of smattering of knowledge about the Muslim religion.
Dubbing herself as the “saccha Hindu” as opposed to the BJP, which she feels is a shame on Hinduism, she has initiated a new divide among the Hindu voters: the liberal Hindus, who believe in the principles of Ram Krishna Paramhansa, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, and the sword-wielding intolerant fundamentalist Hindus, who are out for a grab of all religious spaces.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)