Contested Meanings of Durga Puja in West Bengal | Arup Kumar Sen

Celebration of Durga Puja festival is a big event in the cultural life of West Bengal. However, such celebrations took contested meanings in the public life of Kolkata this year in the context of brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor on duty in R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9, 2024.
Initially, the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, made attempts to address the grievances and protests of the junior doctors as a charismatic leader of the State. When the attempts of the state administration failed to convince the protesting junior doctor community, the chief minister urged the people to call off protests and return to Durga Puja festivities. She also appealed to protesting junior doctors to resume their duties.

Some junior doctors are on a hunger strike from October 5, 2024 onwards at Esplanade, the heart of central Kolkata, with the moral support of their community and different segments of the urban population. As a few of them have been hospitalized in critical conditions, others have joined the hunger strike in solidarity. Meanwhile, senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Kalyan Banerjee criticized the protesting junior doctors-on-fast for lacking the resolve to conduct a genuine hunger strike. He ridiculed them and accused them of turning their fast-unto-death into a “fast-unto-hospitalization”. (www.telegraphindia.com) In fact, the insensitive remarks made by the TMC leaders to trivialize the moral protests of the junior doctors have further polarized the situation.

The TMC government led by Mamata Banerjee started celebrating the Durga Puja carnival with pomp and pageantry since 2016 on the day of immersion of idols of the Goddess. On the day of the carnival this year, the Joint Platform of Doctors and other civil society organizations gave a call for ‘Droher Carnival’ (Carnival of Protest) near the venue of the Durga Puja carnival. The Kolkata Police issued prohibitory orders in the area, under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), to prevent holding of the Protest Carnival. However, the agitating doctors approached the Kolkata High Court, which quashed the prohibitory orders and allowed the doctors to hold the Protest Carnival near the state-sponsored Durga Puja carnival. The junior doctors also formed human chain on the same day along with the people who congregated to support their cause, near the site of the junior-doctors-on -fast.

The above episodes testify that public life in West Bengal has witnessed deep fissures centred around the brutal rape and murder of the young R G Kar doctor.