What a Durga I Saw, Chacha!

আছে ডাইনে বাঁয়ে দুইডা ছেমড়ি পইরা আছে ঢাহাই শাড়ি ঘুরতে দেখছি বাড়ি বাড়ি ফশম (ফ্যাশন) দেখায় ভারি! আবার ময়ুরের ‘পরে বইছেন যিনি এনার বড় চিকচিকানি ধুতি করছেন কোঁচা কী ঠাকুর দেখলাম চাচা! কী দুগ্‌গী দেখলাম চাচী! কী দুগ্‌গী দেখলাম চাচা!

I stumbled across this song from one of Amritarupa Laha’s reel a few days. The Dance-Theatre Artist from Kolkata wrote on her Instagram that this bengali folk song talks about a Muslim’s first experience at Durga Puja.

This is a folk poem compiled by our very own Polli Kobi Jasimuddin and later adapted by folk musician Kaliprasad Bhattacharjee to produce “Gouri Elo”.

The reason people read it as the voice of a Muslim family is that the song addresses "chacha" and "chachi", words Bengali Muslims use for uncle and aunt. Of course, we don’t know for certain, and other interpretations may exist, but there’s something warm about a Muslim experiencing Durga Puja in awe for the first time without the need to say “this is not my festival.”

I got a similar sort of reaction from my father. Every Durga Puja, I go pandal hopping. This time was my first at Shakhari Bazar. Afterwards, I got on a video call with my father, and he started telling me about Pujas of his childhood. My father spent a good five minutes describing the khichuri and labra he and his friends gathered to eat. He reminisced about the narus and the mela that was filled with stalls and activities. He also provided me with a brief lesson on Durga Maa’s origins.

What struck me was how he told it. My father is a pretty religious Muslim, but puja to him didn’t feel like it was someone else’s. It felt like it happened to his neighbourhood and community, and he is very much a part of it all.

This experience felt so very different from what I hear from some of my peers and strangers on the internet. Every year Durga Puja happens, the discourse of whether religious festivals are for everyone starts taking place. We more busy debating than celebrating. Suddenly festivals stopped being something to enjoy and became something to be wary about or even something to disrespect. Jagannath University’s poorly timed back-to-back beef feasts right as we celebrate Durga Puja can’t help but feel intentionally disrespectful.

Bengal and its religious harmony

Bengal has always been a religiously diverse area. Bengal’s art and literature, like the folk song mentioned earlier, are also proof that religious harmony, at least to an extent, existed. Of course, the greatest example is Lalon Shah.

Kazi Nazrul Islam also wrote devotional songs to Kali and Shyama, along with Islamic songs. Medieval Bengali Muslim poets such as Alaol and Syed Sultan also wrote out Hindu and Muslim themes alike, including Alaol's Padmavati, and Muslim poets wrote Vaishnava padavali songs about Radha and Krishna.

This is the Bengal that my father remembers, but I am not sure I do.

Religious divide is a political weapon

I am not saying that Hindus and Muslims have always lived in harmony in South Asia. But there is something I do want to say: the conflict between religions, more often than not, has been, again and again, a political weapon.

When Curzon divided Bengal into two, the boundaries were explicitly carved to create a Muslim-majority East and a Hindu-majority West. Communal identity became a tool to ensure the divide-and-rule policy. Politicians kept turning neighbours into enemies, making ordinary people pay the price for it, from 1905 to 1947 through to today.

Looking at an example beyond Bengal, antisemitism is very much real and dangerous. However, it is used to shut down any criticism one may have towards Israel’s government’s actions. The narrative becomes Jews vs Muslims rather than what it truly is: a genocide. Every time we are afraid of each other, someone in power profits.

Literature and art can bring us together

I feel a sense of religious harmony more closely every time I practice Bharatnatyam. The art form originated as an offering to the deities, danced in temples. As a Muslim, one may think I have no relation to it, but it has taught me discipline and humility. It asks me to understand another tradition without having to give up my own. It made me someone who can respect an art that has survived for centuries, and who is grateful it was shared with me.

That is why I believe literature, art, music, and dance can bring us together. “The other community” is easy to fear or resent because it is a category and not people. Literature, music, and dance replace the category with a specific story.

Traditions were never sealed off from each other. Kathak was developed in Hindu temples but then found its way to Mughal courts. Indian classical music grew through Hindu and Muslim ustads, with gharanas and lineages that crossed religious lines. Bengali itself is full of Persian and Arabic words.

None of this means art dissolves difference or that everyone must participate. Some Muslims, and some Hindus, have sincere objections to mixing sacred and artistic practice, and those are theirs to hold. But what literature and art have given me is a concrete way of how harmony works. It doesn’t require agreeing on belief, just having empathy for one another will do.

Being there for each other

Communal violence is a serious and broad topic, and I don’t want to pretend that I understand the full gravity of it. I am also definitely not claiming that Bengal has been or is coexisting peacefully. There have been perpetrators, political or not political, disrupting our communities. I do not want to say “both sides” as it only highlights our divide. But literature and art do point to how possible religious harmony is for us, and maybe it is time we look at it.

People are free to choose not to celebrate a festival. That is their right, and it is a personal decision that deserves respect. But we shouldn’t feel the need to tell others what to do, and we definitely should not feel the need to go out of our way to disrespect others.

Being there for each other, as neighbours and as a community, is a separate thing, and it matters enormously. So this Puja, whether you go from pandal to pandal or stay at home, I hope we can be the kind of neighbours the song imagines: people who are curious, who are warm, and who can look at a festival with a smile and say: কী দুগ্‌গী দেখলাম চাচা!