Bengal’s Tryst With Rath Yatra Politics

Every year, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee takes part in the Rath Yatra (chariot procession) celebration organised by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Kolkata. This year, she was in the beach town of Digha, nearly 200 km southwest of Kolkata, where a state government-sponsored grand replica of the Puri Jagannath temple was consecrated in April in her presence.

In Digha, she inaugurated the first edition of the Rath Yatra organised on behalf of the Digha Jagannath temple. ISKCON, one of the major global organisations of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, is closely associated with the Digha Jagannath temple management and Friday’s Rath Yatra.

Banerjee had long turned Bengal’s traditional Durga Puja immersion procession ceremony into a spectacle in Kolkata, and subsequently in the district towns, with her government-sponsored annual ‘carnival’. The Jagannath temple and the Digha Rath Yatra have emerged as the second religious spectacle of her creation. The 213-foot-tall Jagannath temple spread over 20 acres of land has become a major crowd-puller since inauguration.

On the eve of Rath Yatra, Banerjee expressed her satisfaction that the new temple has emerged as one of the state’s popular pilgrimage centres. Formally called the Digha Jagannath Dham, formally Jagannath Dham Sanskriti Kendra (cultural centre), it cost the state exchequer Rs 250 crore.

On Friday, taking a leaf out of the Puri Rath Yatra—which starts after Puri’s Gajapati king sweeps the street with a golden broom—the Digha Rath Yatra started with CM Banerjee sweeping the street with a golden broom. ISKCON Kolkata chapter’s vice-president Radhamadhab Das accompanied her. There also were monks from other Hindu organisations. The event saw massive crowds.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief’s grand celebration of a Hindu deity and festivals have visibly irked, if not unnerved, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the principal opposition party in the state. The BJP’s Bengal campaign has been entirely focussed on branding Banerjee as anti-Hindu.

They have been so sensitive about the Digha Jagannath temple that senior leader Dilip Ghosh, who had served as the BJP’s state president, national vice-president and Lok Sabha MP, became completely isolated from the party after he attended the Digha temple consecration ceremony.

On Friday, BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the state assembly, downplayed Banerjee’s Digha visit. “It is a tourist spot. She has gone there for leisure… Puri Dham is the real Dham of Lord Jagannath,” he said.

Right from the time of the Digha temple’s inauguration, the BJP tried to discredit and delegitimise the project. They refuse to call it a temple and brands it as merely a tourist spot. In May, when the Puri temple authorities objected to calling the Digha temple a ‘Dham’, the BJP endorsed the objection.

A Puri temple servitor, Rajesh Daitapati, was present at the Digha consecration ceremony. After the Puri temple authorities suspended him for participation in the Digha event, the BJP supported the move, saying that the Puri servitor had insulted Hindu traditions by participating in the Digha temple consecration event. The Puri temple is the real Jagannath Dham and there can’t be any other Jagannath Dham, party leaders argued.

After the West Bengal government announced that ‘prasad’ (food offered to deities) from the Digha temple will reach every Bengal household, the BJP objected to calling it prasad. They argued that the sweets for mass distribution were being prepared at different sweet shops.

The BJP along with its sister concern, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), alleged that some of the sweets shops that received government orders for preparing the prasad were owned by Muslims.

Adhikari urged the public to reject the Digha prasad being sent by the government. The BJP will arrange for sending prasad from the ‘original’ Puri Jagannath temple to every Bengal household, Adhikari said.

Notably, the BJP had earlier carried out a state-wide programme of distributing prasad from the Ayodhya Ram Temple. The Bengal chief minister had boycotted the Ram Temple consecration event helmed by PM Modi in 2024, saying that she did not support divisive politics. The BJP cited it as yet another example of her anti-Hindu politics.

Only recently, the BJP made a massive hue and cry over the administration in northern West Bengal’s Malda—one of the state’s Muslim-majority districts—disallowing permission for a six-centuries-old Rath Yatra. BJP state unit president Sukanta Majumdar alleged that the move reflected the government’s ‘appeasement of a particular community’, meaning Muslims.

However, the district administration said that the Rath Yatra procession had not been prohibited but the fair that used to take place has been denied permission due to land ownership-related dispute. The administration has court orders for not allowing the fair, as it involves commercial activities, they claimed.

On Friday, however, Banerjee’s grand celebration of the Rath Yatra seemed to have eclipsed the BJP’s campaign against her over the Malda controversy.

In 2017, the BJP and its ideological-organisational parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had made headlines in Bengal by organising massive Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti processions in different parts of the state. Neither was a major public festival in Bengal.

However, the RSS family of organisations’ relentless efforts to popularise the festivals in Bengal over the past eight years have resulted in increasing number and size of Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti processions. Even TMC has followed suit, organising such rallies in different areas.

Rath Yatra, on the other hand, is a traditionally popular festival in Bengal, where it is celebrated at almost every locality, often accompanied by weeklong fairs until Ulto Rath, Lord Jagannath’s return journey from aunt’s home.

Banerjee, who keeps flaunting her knowledge and understanding of religion, her devoutness and her work for the promotion of Hindu festivals and pilgrimage sites, seems to have found a new political weapon in Lord Jagannath to blunt the BJP’s campaign branding her as anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim.

With the state assembly elections due in less than a year, Banerjee’s competition with Modi’s BJP over devoutness looks all set to intensify. Whatever the electoral outcome, such a competition would no doubt keep religion and devotion at the heart of the political campaigns, likely relegating other important issues to the background.