Hindu, Bengali, Secular: Didi’s Different Identities

Kolkata: On April 30, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee inaugurated a grand, 213-foot-tall Jagannath temple spread over 20 acres of land in Digha, the state’s key beach destination bordering Odisha, with great fanfare.

“Words of mouth can never propagate religion; it’s the heart that religion touches. Dharma is to have faith in humans and to love, trust and believe them,” she said at the inauguration.

Costing the government exchequer Rs 250 crore, it architecturally replicates the 12th-century Jagannath temple in Odisha’s Puri, which lies roughly 350 kilometres southwest of Digha.

The new temple is formally supposed to add a pilgrimage attraction to Digha’s tourism sphere. But another undeclared purpose – symbolising Banerjee’s work for the Hindus – rings no quieter. 

Representatives from other prominent religious sites and organisations like the Adyapith and Dakshineswar Kali temples; the Belur Math, Kamarpukur and Jairambati missions of the Ramakrishna Mission tradition; ISKCON; and the Kachua Loknath Dham Dham, among others, attended the inauguration event alongside celebrities from the culture and entertainment world.

Most such sites and organisations have received government patronage on issues like renovation, land and building tourist-friendly infrastructure.

In 2011, her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party came to power, ending the Left Front’s 34-year rule, by claiming to be more left-wing than the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Front by highlighting her support for the struggles of jal-jangal-jameen (water, forests and land).

Now, a year before the 2026 assembly election, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to give her a tough run for the money, Banerjee is keener than ever to display what is described in Bengali as Hinduani.

While the temple was planned several years ago, the intensified Hindutva campaign since the Murshidabad violence has meant that the Banerjee government wants to make the temple as big an event as it can. Photo: X/@AITCofficial.

Hinduani translates to Hinduness, but it is different from Hindutva, which too translates to Hinduness.

Hinduani can be described as public and performative Hinduness, as against private and ritualistic, the display of devoutness being the differentiating factor.

But Banerjee’s Hinduani also posits itself against Hindutva, the ideological-political Hinduness which derives its origin from Hindu nationalism. She is out there to display how devout she is to the cause of the Hindus, even though she challenges the Hindutva notion of India as a Hindu rashtra (nation).

The BJP, the main opposition party in the state, boycotted the temple inauguration event, alleging that the Banerjee government acted against the interests of the Hindus in the recent Murshidabad violence over anti-waqf law protests.

Dilip Ghosh, former BJP state unit president and an ex-MP, drew the party’s censure for attending the event. The party thought his attendance diluted the BJP’s campaign branding Banerjee as anti-Hindu.

While the temple was planned several years ago and its foundation stone laid in 2018, the intensified Hindutva campaign since the death of two Hindus in communal violence in Murshidabad in April has meant that the Banerjee government wants to make the temple as big an event as it can. Therefore, the state’s information and cultural affairs department would ensure that the prasad from the Digha Jagannath temple and its photos reach every home in the state.

The message is clear – let everyone know what she has done for the Hindus.

Following the inauguration of the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya in January 2024 – an event that the TMC boycotted – the BJP and other organisations belonging to its ideological-organisational parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), had distributed the Ayodhya temple’s prasad and photos in many West Bengal neighbourhoods. Now, it's Banerjee’s turn.

According to political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banerjee’s decision to celebrate Jagannath in a big way appears to be an attempt to move Hindu religious discourse away from the northern Indian narrative around Ram and align it more with eastern India’s Vaishnavite tradition.

“She wants to play the Hindu communal card without being anti-Muslim. It’s nonetheless a dangerous move, and she may end up looking like an adulterated version of the BJP. In any case, her use of taxpayers’ money to construct a humongous temple is indefensible at a time when capital allocation in the state budget is depleting,” Bhattacharyya said.

In this image released by @AITCofficial via X on April 29, Banerjee takes part in the sacred 'yajna' at the Jagannath temple in Digha. Photo via PTI.

Identifying identities

Her Hindu identity, however, is not the only one she wants to highlight.

Three days before the temple inauguration, the state Public Service Commission notified the new syllabus for the West Bengal Civil Service exam, in which a paper of 300 marks on either Bengali or Nepali is mandatory. This excludes Hindi/Urdu, which were earlier allowed. Nepali remains mainly because of the Nepali-speaking population in and around the Darjeeling hills.

Making Bengali or Nepali mandatory was a longstanding demand of Bangla Pokkho, a Bengali ethnic rights group that has grown in size and influence since its inception in 2018. Speaking to The Wire, Bangla Pokkho helmsman Garga Chatterjee called it a ‘historic victory’ for Bengal and Bengalis.

“We have been fighting for it for the past six years. In every state, the local language is mandatory for government jobs. That being not mandatory in West Bengal, the state public service commission exam had turned into a pan-northern India exam, allowing many from Hindi-speaking states not only to bag jobs but also to rank high without knowing an iota of Bengali. Those days are over now,” Chatterjee said.

He alleged that the ‘Hindi-Urdu lobby’ in all of Bengal’s parties opposed it and tried to reverse the original gazette notification issued in 2023. According to him, the Left and Muslim organisations tried to say that disallowing Urdu is an attack on Muslims, while the BJP took a two-pronged approach to oppose the move.

On the one hand, BJP leader Jitendra Tiwari launched a Linguistic Minorities Association to lobby for Hindi and oppose this move. On the other hand, Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition, argued that excluding Urdu harms Muslims.

“Excluding Urdu will not harm Bengal’s Muslims, as 95% of the state’s Muslims are Bengalis,” Chatterjee said, adding that they want the empowerment of Bengali-speaking Muslims, not those who speak Urdu. 

Over the past few years, Bangla Pokkho’s Bengali-centric ethnic politics has influenced the TMC’s policies to some extent, but the party has stayed away from pursuing ethnic politics in their style or that of Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

Because Banerjee preaches inclusivity, she or her party avoids taking any clear position on ‘Hindi imposition’. Her government has launched a Hindi University and announced two days of government holidays for Chhath Puja, a festival popular among the Hindus of Bihar and Jharkhand.

The party avoids doing anything that could hurt Hindi-speakers, who make up roughly 7% of the state’s population. They live predominantly in the old industrial towns along the Hooghly River in the districts of Howrah, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas and the southwestern district of Paschim Bardhaman.

From that perspective, making Bengali a mandatory paper is a sensitive move.

Also read: With a Marked Shift in Her Use of Religion, Mamata Banerjee Is Rewriting Bengal's Battle Rules

While the Sangh parivar calls West Bengal a ‘homeland for Bengali Hindus’, which is presumably under threat from the apparent growth in Muslims' political power, they have also faced the charge of imposing predominantly northern Indian Hindu festivals like Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti on Bengal.

The TMC once toyed with the idea of countering it by highlighting how Bengali Hindus practices have traditionally been significantly different from northern Indian Hinduism. In 2017, when the RSS family of organisations first surprised the state’s people by organising Ram Navami rallies in Bengal on an unprecedentedly massive scale, Banerjee had raised the issue that in their zeal for Ram, the Hindutva camp completely ignored Bengal’s own festival, Annapurna puja, which fell on the same day.

However, her dilemmas over identities resulted in the exact opposite – her party started celebrating Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti, Hindutva’s festive imports to Bengal, literally legitimising the same festivals that many TMC leaders initially called ‘alien’ to the state. They never took any initiative to celebrate or popularise the Annapurna puja.

“I think it’s a strategic mistake that we did not popularise Annapurna puja, which happens around the same time as Ram Navami. In my reading, the party feared that a cultural confrontation over Ram Navami may isolate the Hindi-speaking voters and push them entirely to the BJP’s fold,” said a veteran TMC minister, requesting anonymity.

Banerjee’s Hinduani visibly differs from Hindutva. She does not endorse hatred towards any religious group. She promotes all religions. She attends the Eid prayer on Kolkata’s Red Road. She has given the city’s Christmas festival the shape of a carnival centred at the Park Street area in the heart of Kolkata. Only recently, she visited the Islamic shrine of Furfura Sharif.

But all the while, she has been trying to make sure she counters the saffron allegation of minority appeasement by a thorough backing of Hindu religious festivals.

Her government allots Rs 60,000 per Durga puja-organising club, formally for the promotion of the government’s ‘Safe Drive, Save Life’ campaign. She personally oversees the Gangasagar fair arrangements. She has also turned the Durga idol immersion ceremony at the end of Durga puja into a gala and a glitzy affair. And it’s not ending with the Digha temple.

If some senior leaders in the TMC are to be believed, renovated looks or additional facilities at a few more existing Hindu temples and pilgrimage sites are going to be inaugurated in the coming months. Some may call it soft majoritarianism.

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