Why does Hindutva hate Durga Puja being called the ‘autumn festival’?
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The upcoming Durga Puja festival in West Bengal will operate under an unusual ban of sorts. Speaking in the state Assembly, the Chief Minister of the state, Suvendu Adhikari, asked puja committees to not allow stalls if they use the term “sharad utsab” or autumn festival instead of “Durga puja”.
“You people think of Sanatan Dharma as something cultural,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said, singling out the Communists. “You won’t say Durga Puja, you will say sharad utsab.”
We are ready to go to war to remove this poison, Adhikari said to loud cheers from the treasury benches, signing off with the Hindi slogan “Bharat mata ki jai”, victory to Mother India.
A few days later, Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and a Hindutva-leaning popular historian, said he opposed the term “sharad utsab” since it represented a “steady secularisation” of Durga Puja.
“However, what has happened over long...