In early September, Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, a.k.a. Bageshwar Baba, the 30-year-old priest who presides over the Bageshwar Dham in Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh and is closely linked to the BJP, visited West Bengal.

The visit was a widely publicised affair. The chief minister and chief secretary went to meet him, paid obeisances, shared a meal and invited him to set up a temple in the state. However, Shastri created an uproar when he said, during a Hanumant Katha programme in Howrah, that Hindus who eat fish and meat during Durga Puja are pakhandi (hypocrites). “I am offended that during Navratri and Durga Puja, they make ganda khana (dirty food) behind the pandals,” he said.

The remark, predictably, provoked a storm. Social media filled with memes and gags, and Opposition parties were strident in their condemnation. In Bengal, consumption of fish and meat during the Puja is an old, living tradition. In many traditional homes, ancient temples and local community pujas, mutton and fish are offered to the goddess, within Shakta rituals, as prasad.

Most Bengali Brahmins from Smarta families, like their Maithil counterparts in neighbouring Bihar, have long been fish and meat eaters. (In north India, even Smarta families are mainly vegetarian.) The Ashtavimsatitattva (28 ritual digests) written by Raghunandan, a 16th-century contemporary of Chaitanya, is a uniquely Bengali reading of the Smriti-shastras, whose text is still followed by traditional families.

Raghunandan’s magnum opus makes space for ‘deshachara’ (regional custom/local tradition), which sanctions consumption and ritual offering of fish/meat in religious festivals including the Durgotsava, to which he dedicates one of his 28 digests, called the Durgotsava-tattva.

Of course, in Vaishnava households it was customary not to offer fish, and in some Vaishnava Banik (merchant/trader) households, Durga came not as........

© National Herald