KOLKATA, India — Purbasha Roy took her 9-year-old daughter’s hand and pointed to the towering art installation: pink buds symbolizing embryos, menstrual cups arranged in a bouquet, fallopian tubes descending from the corners of the ceiling.
The work, part of a makeshift pavilion to worship the Hindu goddess Durga, was designed to break taboos in India regarding menstruation.. And he had a clear goal: a half-man, half-bull demon at Durga’s feet, representing the “moral police”—India’s patriarchal society.
The pavilion was one of hundreds, many with political messages, that blanketed Kolkata during a recent five-day festival called Durga Puja. It is the most important religious celebration for Hindus in this part of eastern India.
From the dense labyrinths of ancient Calcutta to the parks and apartment complexes of the City, the pavilions, many of them elaborate and colorful, feature hand-made idols of the three-eyed goddess Durga, with her 10 arms outstretched. The goddess, wielding a spear and club, embodies both martial prowess and gentle motherhood—the victory of good over evil.
In recent years, the pavilions have transformed from traditional works of art into high-tech installations representing progressive ideas, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party has tightened its control over India.
This year’s topics included the hardships faced by rickshaw drivers; child labor and trafficking and sexual abuse of girls; and the suffering in the Indian state of Manipur, where Modi has been accused of indifference to a deadly ethnic war. A crying mountain represented climate change. Social workers invited five women victims of acid attacks to a pavilion on the subject.
The pavilions conveyed the message that India remains a nation of diverse beliefs, with resistance to the BJP and its campaign for Hindu homogeneity still alive outside the party’s stronghold in populous and relatively impoverished north India.
The BJP has struggled to enter eastern Bengal, a leftist stronghold of which Kolkata is the cultural heartland. The state of West Bengal is led by the Trinamool Congress, a center-left secular party.
At the menstruation pavilion, Ellora Saha, a local politician, explained to a group of women and men that a young woman portrayed in the installation was pushing a hand representative of an “evil society” that prevents her from entering temples during her period. .
“Durga Puja is all about empowering feminine powers,” Saha said. “And if we can worship an idol, why don’t we worship each and every woman?”
Not all pavilions had a political message. Some served as an escape from everyday life.
Still, many festival-goers, like Roy, said they preferred pavilions with “social messages rather than ostentatious ones.”
“Day by day, the Pujas are turning a new leaf,” Roy said, looking at Reetika, his 9-year-old daughter. “And my daughter is not going to follow the taboos that they made us follow.”
By: SUHASINI RAJ
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6986139, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-11-15 22:50:07
#Hindu #festival #honors #women #challenges #taboos