Ram Navami Under Seige: Mamata Regime Is Making It Near-Impossible For Hindus To Celebrate Upcoming Festival In Bengal

Ram Navami will be celebrated enthusiastically all over India with a lot of grandeur and ceremony. 

But in Bengal, a host of stifling restrictions have been imposed by the Mamata Banerjee government this year as well on Hindu organisations and political parties who plan to bring out Ram Navami rallies from this weekend.

Apart from extracting promises from organisers of the Ram Navami rallies that not more than 200 devotees will be allowed to participate and no weapons — not even long lathis (used to hoist flags depicting Shree Ram) — will be carried by the rallyists, police have imposed route restrictions on the rallies. 

Ram Navami rallies are not allowed to pass through any road where a mosque is located, nor through areas inhabited by Muslims. Also, Ram Navami rallies are not allowed to merge, and all have to adhere strictly to the routes chalked out for them by the police. 

There will be no playing of loud music and devotional songs during the processions, and the organisers have been very strictly instructed to ensure that processionists do not shout religious slogans very loudly.

Police have been summoning the organisers of rallies in Kolkata, Howrah, Burdwan, Asansol, Siliguri, and all other parts of the state and applying pressure on them to restrict the size and duration of the rallies.

The organisers are also being told that they would be held fully responsible for any untoward incident in the course of the rally. 

Such restrictions and warnings have, obviously, dampened the mood of the organisers. “It is as if the state authorities do not want us to hold Ram Navami celebrations,” a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) functionary, who is the organiser of a major Ram Navami rally in North Kolkata, told Swarajya. 

The restrictions on Ram Navami rallies all over the state come against the backdrop of the unprovoked attacks by Muslim mobs on Hindus at Malda’s Mothabari last week. 

Muslim mobs attacked Hindu homes and business establishments on March 27 to protest against a Hindu religious procession that passed by a mosque on the evening of March 26. 

The singing of bhajans by Hindus in the procession reportedly enraged Muslims, who demanded that the processionists stay quiet and disperse. A heated argument ensued, and soon, scuffles broke out between the two groups. 

The next day, Muslim mobs attacked, looted, and vandalised Hindu homes and business establishments. 

“The attacks on Hindus on March 27 were deliberate and designed to not only create fear among the Hindus but also drive home the message that Hindus have to stay subservient to Muslims in Muslim-majority areas where Muslims will lay down rules of conduct for Hindus,” said Malda BJP leader Tanmay Bhaduri. 

Mothabari, which lies barely ten kilometres from the border with Bangladesh, has seen a huge demographic change over the last six decades. 

Like the rest of the district (Malda) and adjoining Murshidabad and Uttar Dinajpur districts, the population of Hindus has shrunk, and that of Muslims has increased exponentially. 

"Large-scale illegal immigration of Bangladeshi Muslims into these areas, as well as all other border districts of the state, has resulted in a huge demographic imbalance," BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari told Swarajya. 

"We all know how the Mamata Banerjee government, and the Left Front government in the past, encouraged this illegal influx to build vote banks and stay in power."

Mothabari is but the latest in a sickening series of innumerable attacks on Hindus by radical Muslim mobs all over Bengal over the last 14 years since Mamata Banerjee came to power in Bengal. 

Hindus have come under attack all over the state, mostly in retaliation for observing their religious festivals. 

Under the present Mamata Banerjee regime, assertiveness by radical Muslims has grown. And led by Salafi clerics, Muslims have been demanding that Hindus restrict their religious practices. 

“Muslims have been objecting to blowing conch shells, beating drums, ringing bells, singing bhajans and kirtans, and taking out religious processions by Hindus. They have been saying that they feel disturbed by such Hindu religious practices. According to these radical Muslims, even Hindu religious processions passing by mosques is objectionable,” said former BJP state president Dilip Ghosh. 

The Mamata Banerjee government, in its eagerness to appease Muslims, has been bending over backward to shower the community with privileges and caving in to all their demands. 

This, say BJP leaders, has emboldened Muslims to demand and even unilaterally enforce restrictions on Hindu religious festivals and rituals. 

VHP leaders say that even in areas where Muslims are not in a majority but have a substantial presence, they (the Muslims) have been objecting to Hindu religious processions passing through areas that they inhabit or in front of mosques, to the singing of devotional songs and other Hindu religious practices. 

“The Mamata Banerjee government has not only been caving in to these unreasonable demands to appease Muslims but has also been proactively and unilaterally imposing restrictions on celebrations of Hindu festivals and Hindu rituals just to appease the Muslim community,” said Adhikari. 

“This is what is emboldening Muslims to attack Hindus. The policy of Muslim appeasement has meant that Muslims are never prosecuted for crimes against Hindus. This has bred a sense of impunity among Muslims. Mamata Banerjee is to be blamed for what is happening to Hindus in the state,” said a senior VHP leader who did not want to be named. 

Past attacks on Hindus by Muslim mobs have largely gone unpunished. Rather than arresting and prosecuting the attackers, police have often arrested and prosecuted Hindus who have dared to protest such attacks. 

“Radical Muslims have realised that they have nothing to fear. This sense of impunity and entitlement, bred by Mamata Banerjee’s Muslim appeasement policy, will only lead to more attacks on Hindus. And it will result in displacement of Hindus from not only areas where Muslims have become a majority but also from areas where they have gained substantial numerical strength due to the fast-changing demography of the state,” the VHP leader added.  

In vast swathes of rural and semi-urban Bengal, Hindus are being slowly displaced, and the areas are slowly becoming Muslim-majority areas. 

“Restrictions on celebrating Hindu religious festivals and observing rituals, coupled with growing Muslim assertiveness that results in everyday harassment of Hindus at public places, the common practice of targeting Hindu girls through ‘love jihad’, making Hindu women feel unsafe and petty crimes against Hindus is making it impossible for Hindus to stay in areas where Muslims are growing numerically,” said Kalyan Prasad Mukhopadhyay, a Hindu rights activist who had to sell off his properties and leave his ancestral village in Murshidabad a decade ago for these reasons. 

“Hindu families, even poor ones, place a premium on their children’s education. Quite often, the children leave home and go to cities in Bengal or outside the state for their academic pursuits. And since there are very few jobs and opportunities in Bengal, a huge number of youngsters from mostly Hindu families migrate to other states and abroad for work,” said Mukhopadhyay. 

“Thus, only the older generation is left behind. Across Bengal, one will find lakhs of households where only the older generation lives. They are too weak—physically, mentally, and numerically—to stand up to Muslim assertion. This is also why Muslim assertion, and consequent attacks on Hindus, has increased,” he added. 

Sociologist Moumita Chakraborty, a Jadavpur University passout who now teaches at a college affiliated to Delhi University, told Swarajya from Delhi: “Bengali Muslims in Bengal have been generally very tolerant and liberal. Since Islam was spread in Bengal mainly by Sufis, Bengali Muslims had always followed a very tolerant and progressive version of Islam and except for some incidents, the state had remained largely free of communalism”. 

“However, the politics of Muslim appeasement has spoiled it all. Political parties—first the Congress, then the CPI(M), and now the Trinamool Congress—have treated Muslims as vote banks. So the parties have patronised clerics and religious figures,” explained Chakraborty. 

These clerics, she added, realised that the best way to maintain their grip on the community was to keep them uneducated and turn them into dogmatic radicals.

“Slowly, the influence of Salafi Islam started increasing, and with most preachers coming from the hardline Darul-Uloom seminary at Deoband, large sections of Bengali Muslims have become radicals who follow the regressive and puritanical Salafi Islam,” said Chakraboty.

Added to this is the growing presence of Urdu-speaking Muslims, especially in and around Kolkata. The Urdu-speaking Muslims, unlike their Bengali counterparts, have always been more hardline and dogmatic. 

While Kolkata had a small population of Urdu-speaking Muslims from the British era, their population received a boost with the illegal immigration of Urdu-speaking Muslims from newly-created Bangladesh. 

These Urdu-speaking Muslims who had migrated to East Pakistan in 1947 had collaborated with the West Pakistani regime during the 1971 liberation war in committing atrocities on Bengalis (Muslims and Hindus alike). They were complicit in the genocide of Bengalis. Thus, after Bangladesh was formed, they started facing persecution in the new nation. 

This triggered their exodus to Bengal, and they settled in areas like Khidderpore, Garden Reach, and other localities that already had a presence of Urdu-speaking Muslims. 

These Urdu-speaking Muslims, an already radicalised lot, slowly influenced their Bengali-speaking co-religionists, and this led to the radicalisation of the entire Muslim community in Bengal, said Chakraborty. 

Poverty and low levels of education, and the mushrooming of mosques and madrassas (funded by Gulf countries) where clerics and teachers preach and teach the regressive and puritanical version of Islam, have also resulted in the radicalisation of Muslims in Bengal. 

“These hardline Salafi preachers, I found out recently to my horror, even tell Muslims that hearing the sounds of conch shells or bells used in pujas is ‘haram’ according to Islam. No wonder then that many Muslims who fall for such nonsense try to impose their will on Hindus. And when Hindus oppose them, as they rightfully should, these radical Muslims go berserk and create trouble,” a retired Bengali Muslim police officer who runs an educational foundation now told Swarajya. 

“I blame the current government in the state for the radicalisation of Muslims. Reluctance to impose the rule of law and prosecute Muslim wrongdoers has emboldened these radical elements and bred a sense of impunity among them. Hindus, naturally, resent this appeasement. The result is that communal tensions are increasing. Mamata Banerjee is responsible for this,” said the former police officer, who did not want to be named. 

The appeasement of Muslims and the refusal of the state to prosecute those who commit atrocities on Hindus have triggered a counter-mobilisation of Hindus. 

“This counter-mobilisation of Hindus is inevitable. Embattled and with their backs to the wall, Hindus have slowly started fighting back. Desperate Hindus are no longer going to be cowed down with threats and punitive action by the biased and supine police force of Mamata Banerjee,” Suvendu Adhikari told Swarajya.

That is why, despite the dark shadow of Mothabari hanging heavy over Ram Navami, and fully aware of the fact that more Mothabaris are inevitable, Hindus of Bengal are likely to use the Ram Navami celebrations to showcase their strength and assert themselves. 

Organisers of many Ram Navami celebrations told Swarajya that despite police imposing curbs on the processions, the attendance in the celebrations that commence this weekend are likely to surpass those of past years. 

Ram Navami celebrations this year will indicate how far Hindus in Bengal have been able to mobilise themselves to assert their religious rights.