The fight for political control of Durga Puja in West Bengal is nothing new. Most persons in the state have grown up watching one ruling party after another trying to capture the festival, be it the Congress or the Left (the latter, albeit quietly), the Trinamool Congress, and now the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Patronage has meant money to local puja clubs and committees, ministers becoming part of these committees, and pada (neighbourhood) politics dressed up as devotion. Fifteen years of the Mamata Banerjee government made that machinery unusually visible, raising massive grants for community pujas and letting party leaders run the most crowded committees.
After the BJP swept the Assembly polls on 4 May, ending TMC's rule with more than 200 seats, few in Bengal were surprised that the new government would also reach for the same levers. Durga Puja is about worship. But it is also business, territory, and prestige. Kumartuli, where the idols of Durga and other deities are made, is already crowded. Pandals are rising. Bonedi (traditional) houses are preparing rituals their families have kept for generations.
But this year, something else is also happening. With less than two months to go for the state’s biggest festival, what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has done is different from the old club politics playbook of cash and control.