The fight for political control of Durga Puja in West Bengal is nothing new. Most persons in the state have grown up watching one ruling party after another trying to capture the festival, be it the Congress or the Left (the latter, albeit quietly), the Trinamool Congress, and now the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Patronage has meant money to local puja clubs and committees, ministers becoming part of these committees, and pada (neighbourhood) politics dressed up as devotion. Fifteen years of the Mamata Banerjee government made that machinery unusually visible, raising massive grants for community pujas and letting party leaders run the most crowded committees.After the BJP swept the Assembly polls on 4 May, ending TMC's rule with more than 200 seats, few in Bengal were surprised that the new government would also reach for the same levers. Durga Puja is about worship. But it is also business, territory and prestige. Kumartuli, where the idols of Durga and other deities are made, is already crowded. Pandals are rising. Bonedi (traditional) housbes are preparing rituals their families have kept for generations. But this year, something else is also happening. With less than two months to go for the state’s biggest festival, what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has done is different from the old club politics playbook of cash and control.Istead, it has prescribed how the idol should look. It has give a call against "theme pujas", instead encouraging "shabeki" (traditional) idols and decor. It has also diktats on who should organise the festival, and whether meat and fish may come near a pandal. In doing so, the VHP has tried to enter and alter the religious grammar of Durga Puja itself. The views are not only poorly informed but also represent a skewed idea of Bengal and an attempt to dress up its most pluralistic traditions with a north Indian template of political Hindutva. The question is not only about whether a “diktat” was issued. The larger question is what the VHP wanted to establish: the power to control the narrative.Durga, Dissent, and Drama: How Bengal's Pujo Turns Political Every YearVHP's Flip Flop on Durga Puja ReformsThe controversy became messy because the organisation spoke in two voices. After an 26 August meeting with puja organisers in Salt Lake, state functionary Swarup Chatterjee said organisers had been asked to keep a “strict prohibition” on non-vegetarian food inside the puja pandal premises, while stalls outside would face no objection. Nirgunananda, of the VHP’s central advisory council, urged meat and fish not be sold or eaten in and around pandals, so that scraps would not reach the idol. Though Bengal’s puja had never been strictly vegetarian, he said the “sanctity” of the Mother had to be preserved. The organisation also objected to “distorted” idols under the cover of artsy themes and said festivals should remain with those who practise the faith. Then came the retreat. VHP's International president Alok Kumar said the group had issued no directions on arrangements at Bengal’s pandals, that it had no right to do so, and that food had not even been discussed at the meeting. The remarks, he said, were one member’s personal reply to a reporter. Eastern region secretary Amiya Sarkar added that the Parishad does not issue “fatwas”, was not against thematic pujas as such, and wanted cleanliness, not a satvik diet, imposed on Bengalis. A walk-back does not erase the first impulse. An organisation that felt entitled to draw the boundaries of Bengal’s most expansive religious festival has already revealed its ambition. This is not a case of misreporting or misinterpreting the VHP’s intentions. It is, instead, another Hindutva experiment in Bengal. The pattern is not entirely unfamiliar. Consider how the recent Jadavpur University controversy was handled. The BJP carefully distanced itself from the ABVP and was not formally part of the row. Yet, invoking concerns around law and order and India’s internal security, the BJP-led establishment found a way to enter the campus and increasingly assert control over the university.The VHP’s intervention in Bengal’s Durga Puja traditions must perhaps be viewed through a similar political lens. The objective is not merely to reinterpret religious practices but to enter spaces that have historically evolved outside the rigid framework of Hindutva politics—and gradually reshape their meanings, narratives and boundaries.The Puja Pandal is Not HomogenousThe dominant Hindutva diatribe against Bengalis is over the consumption of non-veg food inside pandals where the deity is housed. While non-veg food is not unallowed during Durga Puja, and in fact is a customary part of some rituals, the description is not entirely accurate.The confusion begins when outsiders treat Durga Puja as a homogenous ritual, which it is not.The most visible form of the puja is the sarbojanin, or “for everyone” puja, held in public pandals. These sarbojanin pujas inlcude old, traditional committees such as Bagbazar Sarbojanin, more than a century old, that keep the idols and mandaps (pandals) as authentically close to the form they inherited as possible, refusing the fashion of themes. Then come the “theme pujas”, the commercial engines of the season, where the pavilion becomes a stage. For example, Santosh Mitra Square last year built its spectacle around Operation Sindoor, with BJP leader Sajal Ghosh as the committee’s driving force. He had earlier been in the Trinamool Congress. Housing-complex pujas, low-budget and local pandals form a third layer of sarbojanin pujas. While smaller pujas do not have food stalls, the bigger, open-to-all pandals do. These food stalls are not installed inside the inner pandal or the sanctum sanctorium of the pandal, where the idol is housed. Food stalls inside the pandal premises are located in keeping with fire safety rules as well as customs keeping cooking and commerce away from that sanctumWhat people eat in front of the deity is bhog, prepared especially by the puja committee. It is not a market-bought plate of mutton roll. The picture of Bengalis selling and devouring non-veg inside the mandap is a misconception convenient for those who have not entered one. Bhog is not a community lunch that happens to be served near an idol. It is first an offering to the deity. The cooking follows conservative rules of caste and food purity (amish-niramish). In most sarbojanin pujas, designated cooks prepare it. The food offered to Durga in public pandals is traditionally vegetarian: Gobindobhog rice and moong in khichuri, labra (mixed veggies) , beguni or begun bhaja (aubergine fritters), mango or tomato chutney, papad and payesh (sweet dish). After the offering, it becomes prasad and is shared with devotees. To collapse bhog into “Bengalis eat meat at puja” is to miss the grammar of the ritual.BJP's Bid to Divide Bangla Rooted in Hindutva Politics of Linguistic Exclusion'Niramish Paatha': Decoding the 'Vegetarian Mutton'There is another kind of puja, which is not always open to all and followes its own rules. The Bonedi (traditional) pujas like the Shovabazar Rajbari, Mitra Bari are not led by committees but the families living in the ancestral homes of Kolkata. They do not follow the trends or the committee circulars of open pandals, instead following their own customs. The customs vary from family to family and often reflect the family's history or legacy. In some Bonedi pujas, non-veg is part of bhog itself.Bengal’s dominant religious current has historically been Shakta, where the goddess is not merely worshipped but understood as power itself. In the Shakta tradition, or Shaktism, Shakti, the divine feminine energy, is regarded as the supreme and ultimate reality. It is this philosophical and cultural imagination that has shaped Bengal’s relationship with Durga. She is not simply a deity to be placed within narrow definitions of ritual purity, but the embodiment of strength, creation, destruction and the universe itself.Texts such as the Kalika Purana have long authorised bali (ritual sacrifice), animal offering, in specific Tantric frames. Goat and, in older memory, buffalo sacrifice customs were tied to Durga Puja, since Durga is the slayer of the buffalo-demon Mahishasur. The practice of this blood ritual has mostly faded due to cost, law, morphing tastes, and calls for reform.Where the meat still appears as prasad, it is cooked without onion and garlic. That is called niramish patha, litereally meaning “vegetarian mutton”, niramish because the seasoning follows the satvik rule (no onion and garlic) even when the flesh does not. Some houses offer ilish (Hilsa) or other fish to the deity on Ashtami. Even then, only this ritually cooked food is taken before the deity, and not by everyone in the family. To call this a hygiene problem is to refuse history.Do Bengalis eat non-veg in Durga Puja?Yes. Most households do, because Durga Puja is seen as the celebration of the divine daughter's homecoming, not as a season of Vaishnavite abstinence. There is no Navratri-style ban on non-veg across the ten days. Still, custom has its pauses. On Shashthi, the day of bodhon and homecoming, many families keep the kitchen vegetarian. Mothers often fast on the day for the protection of children. Rice is restricted for the woman observing the vow. On Ashtami the crowd is for anjali, the flower offering after a morning fast. The meal that follows in the pandal is khichuri and beguni, labra and chutney, because that is the prasad of the day, not because Bengal has converted to vegetarian nationalism. Outside the premises, fish and mutton return. Stalls stand away from the idol. In family pujas too, anything other than bhog is eaten away from the deity. The rule is proximity to the deity, not a war on the Bengali plate. CR Park Viral Video: Does BJP Want Bengalis to Stop Eating Fish?What Does the VHP Want? What is being attempted here is the imposition of political Hindutva by bringing in customs followed elsewhere to transplant the interpretation of Hinduism in Bengal.Bengal’s Hinduism is deeply Shakta, riverine and rooted in the rhythms of household life. It does not necessarily fast through Navratri, nor does it instinctively regard fish as an act of ritual pollution. There is no need to manufacture a civil war between different Hinduisms. But there is every reason to acknowledge that these traditions are different, and that difference cannot simply be erased in the name of a singular Hindu identity.That is precisely what makes the present intervention appear deliberate. Durga Puja is among the most pluralistic religious festivals in the country, not despite Bengal’s Hindu traditions but because of them.In Bengal, Muslims have for generations been part of puja committees, raised funds and run clubs, from Kidderpore’s Five Star Club to Alipore 78 Pally and several puja committees in Murshidabad. Chetla Agrani itself grew under the patronage of former Cabinet Minister and former Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim. Such facts sit uneasily with a politics that wants the festival to be exclusively “in the hands of those who practise the faith”, a phrase that can become a coded way of thinning a crowd that has historically been far more diverse.The misinformation, therefore, has a more invasive purpose. For a large section of Hindus in other parts of India who are unfamiliar with Bengal’s religious traditions, the idea of meat being served alongside a goddess during what they understand as Navratri is almost unimaginable. A distorted image of a puja pandal is enough to produce outrage and harvest that shock. The controversy then does its political work long before the facts have a chance to catch up.The BJP’s decision to maintain its distance from the episode may also be part of this larger experiment. Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar described the VHP as an “independent organisation” and pointed out that theme Pujas have a long history in Bengal. The arrangement is convenient. The party governs, while the Parishad probes. One tests the temperature of Bengal and its secular moorings; the other retains the option of keeping its hands clean.By intervening in traditions and customs that have existed for years, the. VHP and other right wing groups may be trying to establish which Hinduism is Hindu enough. But Bengal’s answer to such questions has never been simple, uniform or sanitised. It has been plural, argumentative and, quite literally, well-fed. That is not a flaw in Bengal’s religious tradition. That is the tradition itself.'What If I Am Muslim?': Hindu Bengali Theatre Artist Assaulted By Hindutva Men