Just when we thought that the secular liberals of Kolkata, who are infamous for being deprived of Dharma, can’t stoop any lower they proved us wrong. After desecrating the Durga puja pandal with shoes last year and with azaan the previous, Kolkata now has a Durga Puja Pandal themed after sex workers.

The Nawpara Dadabhai Sangh Puja Committee has set up the controversial pandal to depict the lives of sex workers. A murti of the Devi can be seen sitting at a replica of a brothel. The organizers are trying to ‘create awareness’ in society about their living conditions. TMC leader and Lok Sabha MP actor Shatrughan Sinha inaugurated the pandal on Monday. Addressing the people at the inauguration, he applauded the organizers for coming up with this theme and said that it was a matter of great fortune for him to have inaugurated the pandal.

While we understand that the lives of sex workers are complicated, the problem with the entire optics is the objectionable time and placement of the theme. Maa Durga is not an object of artistic experiment. She is the Devi Maa of might and a manifestation of satitva. She is placed on the highest pedestal during the nine days of Navaratri or Durga Puja. Through this obnoxious portrayal, the organizers have attempted to mar the sanctity of Maa Durga. 

We wonder what kind of positive change these organizers are trying to bring in the lives of sex workers by putting a pandal themed on their lives. How are the sex workers benefitting from this “awareness”? These organizers have enough funds with which they could have brought a constructive change in the lives of the thousands of women of Bengal’s famous brothel, Sonagachhi. Instead, they put up a Durga Puja pandal in their name to draw in crowds. 

The organizers at the Nawpara Dadabhai Sangh Puja Committee are, in fact, also exploiting the sex workers’ helplessness in a different way. 

“..Durga is depicted as a mother, through whom the organizers try to convey that even a sex worker has the form of a mother…” writes Times Now praising this great degeneracy in the name of progressive thought. Can the media house link such progressive views with the religious figures of any other religion without their journalists getting the “sar tan se Juda” threat? 

Keeping up with the trend of mocking Durga Puja and reducing it to a social carnival, another organizer made a replica of the Saint Peter’s Basilica church in Vatican City. This church is one of the most significant Catholic churches and an important Christian site located in Italy. Various sculptures and paintings relating to the Catholic faith have been placed as decoration inside the pandal.

These organizers’ desperate and shameless urge to push secularism down the throats of Hindus during Durga Puja has now become excruciating. Theme-based Durga Pujas were always popular and a crowd-puller in Kolkata. But in the past ten years, during the rule of TMC, Durga Puja has become a social carnival and lost its Dharmic roots. 

Crowds line up these pandals for hours to get 2 seconds of darshan. Most days and evenings are spent gorging on egg rolls, chicken kebabs, fish fry, and Mughlai. People crowd restaurants to feast on Biryani. The sale of halal meat is at its peak because most of the eateries that put up fast food stalls around these pandals are owned by Muslims and use halal-certified meat products only. We have discussed multiple times how the money generated from the sale of halal products channels into terror funds. 

Through the years, Kolkata’s theme-based pujas have repeatedly desecrated and defiled Maa Durga. Kolkata loves to claim Durga Pujas as their own and takes pride in the scale on that Durga puja is celebrated in their state. Some of these superiority-complex-infested individuals use social media to expose their alarming bigotry toward non-Bengalis through “Our Pujo” claims. 

Hiding behind the false claim of “Our Pujo,” this generation of Durga Puja organizers has done irreparable damage to the idea and spirit of the revered Hindu festival, which, by its nature, belongs to every Hindu, regardless of his native language and city. Having an anti-Hindu government at the helm of the state machinery, which pumps vast funds into these theme-based pujas, has also encouraged the enemies of Hindu culture to take away religiosity from Durga Pujas. 

(Featured Image Source: Social media)