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Home of Indic Scholarship

Ban on Durga Puja: An Assault on the Core of our Civilization

Part I

We show that it is Shakti Puja that has bound civilisational India across times, locations and groups (tribals included). It is Shakti Puja that inspired defense against invaders. Indian women have a long tradition of taking up arms whenever civilization has been threatened. This is perhaps a direct fallout of the Indic worship of Shakti as the feminine.

Part II

In contrast to Indic civilization, a deep aversion to the worship of the divinity as feminine is rooted in Abrahamic traditions. There is also a long history of attacks on public worship by infidels.

Part III

Both Parts I and II together provide a civilizational context to the recent attacks
on Durga Puja and hindu public worship. We chronicle such attacks in the last five years. The phenomenon is pandemic in the entire subcontinent. West Bengal no doubt is in the forefront. but the attacks are not limited to West bengal by any means.

Part IV

In this we argue that the right of the Hindus to practise religion is being violated due to a unholy matrimony between fundamentalist religious minority groups and political parties of different hues. This is where we discuss in detail as to how Durga Puja has been banned in some villages of West Bengal with direct connivance from politicians, severe restrictions have been imposed by the administration on Durga Puja processions throughout India (not just West Bengal). Political parties either take stances actively opposed to Hindus, or do not reverse the same adopted by their predecessors.
This was however not the India that the genuine freedom fighters envisioned. The stances of Veer Savarkar and Shyamaprasad Mookerjee are well-known with respect to Hindu rights. We therefore dwell on the positions that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who even the leftists and Islamists have not accused of religious bias, had adopted with respect to the rights of the Hindus to practice their public worships (a bit of that is in Part II as well).
Finally, we dwell on the consequences of the decided anti-Hindu shift in our polity.
In Part IV, we have made the point that the anti-Hindu nature of our polity is a direct consequence, or the cause, or perhaps both, of the anti-Hindu nature of our media. We have documented religious bias against Hindus in public discourse, focusing on media.