CR Park Viral Video: Does BJP Want Bengalis to Stop Eating Fish?

A viral video of men threatening Bengali fish sellers to move the market away from a temple has left CR Park astir.

Fish sellers in CR Park faced threats from unidentified men recently—a video of which has since gone viral.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

Dibyendu Das was a busy man on 9 April, a day after a video depicting a self-proclaimed group of ‘sanatani’ men threatening Bengali fish sellers, including Das, at the posh Market No. 1 of Chittaranjan Park in Delhi went viral. In between reassuring phone calls from worried customers and hurried bites to camera-ready media persons, Das hurriedly conveyed that the “issue had been blown out of proportion”.

The “issue” in question was the open threat, given by some men belonging to a fringe group named ‘The Rashtra Dharma’ on Instagram, to the fish sellers, asking them to stop conducting their business in that spot due to its proximity to a 'Hanuman mandir'.

“The first time they came, they chanted Jai Shree Ram, claimed they were 'sanatani' and started speaking to us very rudely. They said we are hurting Hindus. We are all Hindu as well, so it was rather strange. They came again with microphones and cameras, this time like they were reporters,” Das told The Quint.

In one of the versions of the video, the men can be seen telling the sellers that they were committing 'jeevhatya' by slaughtering the fish, and the fact that it was so close to a Hanuman temple hurt their sentiments.

Dibyendu Das' father had started Dulal Fish Shop at Market No. 1 of CR Park in 1984.

(Photo: Rakhi Bose/The Quint)

According to the shopkeepers, the men came twice, in the second week of March and then again in the first week of April during Navratri. Das, who runs Dulal Fish Shop, which was set up by his father in 1984, told The Quint that in all his years selling fish beside the temple, no one has ever objected.

“Firstly, this is primarily a Kali temple, and everyone knows she is a non-vegetarian deity. On special occasions, we serve up fish or goat meat to the goddess as an offering. We are Hindus too—and it is part of our culture and religion,” he asserted.

Others like fellow fish seller Sujit Das, who owns one of the oldest shops in Market No. 1, claimed that the market was made and run by traders and shopkeepers, which precedes the temple.

"So, technically, it is our temple first".

What Came First—Mandi or Mandir?

CR Park was established in the early 1960s under the name EPDP (East Pakistan Displaced Persons) Colony to accommodate the waves of refugees coming in from erstwhile East Pakistan in the decades after Partition.

Shopkeepers state that Market No. 1, consisting of 150-170 shops, including the 27 licensed fish stalls, stands on land transferred by the Union Ministry of Urban Development to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which eventually allotted it as a market. “All shops here are licensed. There are regular checks and health inspections. We follow all legal procedures,” Jadav Chandra Dey, who's the president of the Market No. 1 Traders' Association, told The Quint.

In the video, the men can be seen threatening the vendors by saying that "DDA cannot run, we will correct their mistakes. The whole country is watching". Dey argued that even DDA could not do anything here without completely changing the law as a majority of the shopkeepers held properties on "free hold, not lease".

"There had been an issue about licenses in 2013 when the Sheila Dixit government had sent notices. The unlicensed sellers were removed. Everyone here now is legal and has paperwork," he added.

Locals involved with the temple, which stands adjacent to the fish market behind it, state that moving the market was out of question as both temple and market are “inseparable”. Prabhanshu Pattnaik, aka ‘Bachchu da’, a member of the Shree Shree Dakshina Kali Temple Trust and owner of a ‘dosho karma’ (ritualistic items) shop in the market, said that the first temple was built around 1972 when the market first emerged.

“Only shopkeepers are part of the temple trust and everyone here pitches in toward its maintenance and upkeep. We do Kali and Durga Puja here— and it’s part of our tradition”

Prabhanshu Pattnaik, member of Dakshina Kali Temple Trust, CR Park Market 1

Regarding the confusion over the "Hanuman or Kali Mandir" question, Pattnaik clarified, “It was initially just a Kali temple but over the years, an idol of Hanuman was added to the front facade by the trust after some of the members expressed the wish".

“I laid the stones of this new temple as a young man,” Dey chimed, adding that a smaller temple had existed at its spot, and yet another smaller one before that on the other side of the road. "The temple grew with the market," he said.

Jadav Chandra Dey, president of the local market association, and Bachchu Da, member of the Kali temple trust, claim such issues have never happened before.

(Photo: Rakhi Bose/The Quint)

Murmurs of Anxiety and Politics over Food

Despite the apparent gaiety and laughs caused by the chitter-chatter of scribes and flashing cameras, undercurrents of anxiety could be felt here and there. The situation was tense enough for the police and local lawmakers to get involved, especially after Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra tweeted the video, alleging the hand of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) behind the incident.

Soon after, CR Park SHO Vandana Rao visited the spot and assured vendors. Speaking with The Quint, Additional DCP (South) Achin Garg said that investigations are underway.

“No FIR has been filed in the case. But a probe has been initiated to ascertain if the matter is a cognisable offence or not."

Achin Garg, Additional DCP (South), Delhi Police

Police officials also said that they had identified the people in the video and that police personnel had been deployed in the area to watch out for any further untoward incidents.

A sizeable chunk of CR Park residents are BJP voters and many of the fish sellers are BJP karyakartas themselves. Local resident and BJP worker Moloyendu Mukherjee, who had come to the market to “inspect the scene”, told The Quint that the party was not behind the incident and that the issue was being "politicised" by Moitra to eke out gains in West Bengal.

On 8 April, Moitra shared the video on X with the post, “Please watch saffron brigade BJP goons threaten fish-eating Bengalis of Chittaranjan Park, Delhi. Never in 60 years has this happened, residents say.”

Soon after the video went viral, Moitra was accused by the BJP of sharing a 'doctored' clip. However, shopkeepers confirmed that the men did indeed come on two occasions and threatened them as seen in the video. Moitra also doubled down by sharing another video by a YouTuber interviewing the two vendors seen in the earlier clips and the latter confirming it was indeed them in the video.

Jumping on the bandwagon, former Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj also took potshots at the ruling party. He said if the BJP had an issue with CR Park Bengalis eating fish, "they should have said so in their manifesto".

Ripples of the controversy were felt in West Bengal as well, which is headed to polls next year, where Moitra’s tweet led to a political slugfest.

In CR Park, however, residents felt that while the bell tolled here, more noise came out of Bengal. “That Kolkata politicians don’t understand our issues is fine but to try and make political brownie points out of it is unfair. They have created trouble for us here,” Mukherjee, who has lived in CR Park since 1983, stated.

As the incident left the BJP red faced, it has since tried to distance itself from the controversy, calling it a “political plan to destabilise" them in the area. BJP MLA Shikha Roy, who recently wrested the Greater Kailash Assembly seat from Bhardwaj, visited the market and assured the vendors that no one will have to move.

Responding to allegations of the men in the video being associated with the BJP, Roy said, “Says who? These are just some people looking for publicity".

She further told The Quint:

"I assure the citizens of CR Park that no such action against fish sellers will be allowed. We respect the people’s culture”.

Nevertheless, unverified photos that emerged on the internet depict one of the men allegedly seen in the CR Park video alongside Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta. Roy said photos like that prove nothing as who party leaders meet cannot always be monitored, especially at public events.

Screengrab from a video shared by a page named Jagobharat_Official on Instagram.

(Photo: Instagram)

Two weeks back, the men from the CR Park video had shared a clip of covering an 'Akbar Road' sign board—and asking the BJP why names of 'traitors' were still on Delhi roads.

Culture vs Religion vs Regionalism

Dr Saswati Bhattacharya, assistant professor of sociology at Delhi University's Lady Shree Ram College and member of a local Durga Puja committee, said in the 19 years of her residence in CR Park, issues over veg/non-veg have only come up in the past five or six years.

“Earlier, we used to have non-veg food stalls inside the puja pandal premises. Now, we allot the stalls outside the park,” she said.

The change was admittedly attributed to two incidents of fire that broke out during Durga Puja in her area over the last decade. But rumours of threats to close meat or fish shops during Navratri did the rounds again in 2021 when the markets had just been reopening post the COVID-19 pandemic. Many had raised eyebrows at the time. But the chorus for segregation has grown since, with a growing lobby of residents, especially of non-Bengalis, that feel religious activities should be separated from non-veg food.

Politically, residents of CR Park tend to be right of centre. It’s not because they support Hindutva or the BJP but more a matter of “transactional politics”, as Bhattacharya puts it. But then, being a migrant community, a sense of performative cultural identity keeps them deeply rooted to Bengali cultural mores.

“The people here are laughing now because they realise this is not a real threat. But if the locals do feel their cultural rights are being imposed upon by Punjabis or Marwaris or some other community, they will react”.

Dr Saswati Bhattacharya, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Delhi University

It’s a common saying among CR Park Bengalis that “the Punjabis got GK, let us have CR Park”. But such cultural immunity is only enjoyed by Bengalis of the upscale South Delhi neighbourhood.

Amlan Basu, a techie born in Delhi and brought up in Dilshad Garden, points out that in other parts of the city like his own locality, meat shops are routinely closed during Navratri or other Hindu festivals despite a high number of Bengalis living in the vicinity. (Navratri coincides with Durga Puja in September-October).

On the question of meat eating and goddess worship, Bhattacharya offers a sociological perspective. In West Bengal as well as in parts of Bangladesh, a temple of Kali usually marks meat or fish shops, "irrespective of who slaughters the meat".

“It’s a clash of 'little tradition' vs 'greater tradition'. The dominant culture is trying to impose by interfering in regional cultural practices without understanding their contextual and semantic meaning,” she explained.

Kali is a goddess of the subaltern, and her worship is common among communities involved in cutting/butchering meat.

(Photo: Rakhi Bose/The Quint)

Kali is a subaltern deity, often considered a “malevolent” goddess who has to be "appeased with blood". Though venerated across Bengali households, even in West Bengal, her worship is more pronounced among marginalised communities (incidentally those most butchers or fish cutters belong to), many of which view her or her avatars as their patron deity. She is not as ‘sanitised’ or Sanskritised as the other deities of the Hindu pantheon. It is a point that Mahua Moitra has also previously raised, during a controversy over an indie film poster depicting Kali smoking a cigarette.

In the CR Park video, the men claim that there is no evidence in scripture to suggest meat eating as part of Hindu religious traditions. Das counters this by pointing out that in the Kamakhya temple in Assam, the goddess is served 'bhog' made of non-vegetarian offerings.

Speaking with The Quint, he pointed at the image of Kali he hangs over his fish shop, and quipped,

“Look at what she holds in her hand. It’s the severed head of her enemies. She is even wearing a garland of severed heads. Do you think she has a problem with a little fish?”