“A Vijaya Dashami with NO Durga Puja”

This is not the name of a movie. Durga Puja Committees across Deganga area in N 24 Paragana have gone empty. No Murthis (Hindu Religious Icons) were worshipped as has been done in this area for ages.The biggest Bengali mega-festival for which the Hindu awaits in excitement and hope for the full annum have been boycotted and relinquished by the Goddess’ followers. Deganga Hindus had decided NOT to bring Mother Durga and her 4 children home, ie NOT to celebrate Durga Puja, ie, Sacrifice Durga Puja in 2010.

Has there been a calamity, an earthquake, a typhoon, or flood ? NO ! Over 500 Hindu homes and 500 Hindu owned businesses have been attacked, multiple Hindu temples have been desecrated and defiled, all with synchronized orchestration by a planned well organized mob under the leadership of MP Haji Nurul Islam. All within a three day span in September, 2010.

Hindus in Deganga have treated this as more serious than a calamity, an earthquake, a typhoon, or a flood. The biggest festival of Deganga’s Hindus have been renounced by all the Puja committees of the Deganga Puja Samanvay Committee. They hoped that this will catch the attention of the anti-Hindu media, anti-Hindu administration, anti-Hindu Police, and the anti-Hindu politicians of West Bengal.

This Puja season, while thousands of Hindus in Deganga spent their days in fear, distress, and uncertainty for their and their children’s future, the corrupt local media and the vote hungry politicians have done everything in their power to hide the reality from the masses in Kolkata, the capital city, living 20 miles away and elsewhere.

Hindu Samhati has endorsed to the fullest the decision by the Puja Samanvay Committee to renounce this Puja in protest of the anti Hindu stance of the West Bengal media, administration, police and politicians. We want to see that the situation is changed, so that we would be able to do the Pujas in full pristine form in 2011, or else, we have to expand our struggle beyond Deganga and N 24 Parganas.

*In October-November 1946 the whole of India, especially North and Central India observed a Black Diwali in protest against the horrific riots and Hindu genocide in Noakhali, in erstwhile East Bengal. Maybe this Dark Dussera of Deganga will alert us to an impending calamity of similar proportions that hit the Hindus of India in 1946-47.