Opinion Bengali Hindus know how to worship. They don’t need lessons
The man in a recent viral video, or for that matter, anyone who questions Bengali Hindus’ meatatarian spirituality, must understand our complex history
The relationship between Bengali Hindus and fish or meat is interwoven in three spiritual, historical and political narratives. (Express file photo) 
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A video of a man tutoring Bengali fish sellers on the “responsibilities of Sanatanis to not harm any animal” at a market in Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park has sparked a political slugfest. While TMC MP Mohua Moitra blamed the BJP for dictating “what we are going to eat and where we should have our shops,” the Delhi BJP president, Virendra Sachdeva, ruled out the involvement of his party and condemned the incident. The allegations of the man in the video — who has not yet been identified — that the fish market sharing the same wall with a temple hurts the sentiments of Hinduism, however, evokes a larger debate. On the one hand, it flags the homogenising tendency of recent Hindutva that denies flexibility and multiplicities of practices; on the other, it places the Bengali imagination of Sanatana against that of the Hindi heartland.
The relationship between Bengali Hindus and fish or meat is interwoven in three spiritual, historical and political narratives. Firstly, Bengal’s Hindu spirituality is mostly divided into two practices: Shaktism and Vaishnavism. While the former is centred around the worshipping of women deities like Kali and Durga, the latter — popularised during the Bhakti movement following Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s reformist stint — worships Krishna and his other avatars. Besides their ritualistic diversities, what makes them different is their culinary practices. The worshippers of Shaktism are strictly meat-eaters, while the Vaishnavites are vegetarians.
In Bengal, Kali Puja — started by the order of Raja Krishnachandra Roy of Nadia as documented in an English missionary William Ward’s 1815 book A View of the History, Literature and Religion of the Hindoos — is incomplete without animal sacrifice. Kalighat Kali temple, considered to be one of the major centres of Kali worship, is known for everyday goat sacrifice. Here, mutton is offered to the goddess and consumed by her devotees. Shib Chunder Bose, in his 1881 book The Hindoos As They Are, wrote, “The meat of goats that are daily sacrificed before the altar of Kali being too numerous for local consumption, are sold to outside customers much in the same manner as fruits and vegetables are brought from the neighbouring villages into the market.” He even mentioned that there used to be competition between different Kali shrines to sell meat.
Bengalis are known to savour niramish mangsho – vegetarian mutton made without garlic and onion. People from this region, mostly bhadraloks (upper caste, middle-class Bengalis), who consume this niramish preparation during Durga puja, consider sacrificing garlic and onion enough purism for being a devout Hindu. Even Bengalis’ understanding of environmental concerns is, in some way or another, connected to meat and festivals. Most Bengali households don’t eat hilsa fish after Saraswati Puja, which marks the beginning of spring, the breeding season for the fish.
Secondly, most of Bengal’s revered spiritual gurus were meat-eaters. Swami Vivekananda, whom the BJP considers a central figure in the emancipation of Hindu consciousness, used to cook a spicy mutton curry for his Western disciples. Sankar, in his book The Monk as Man talks about Vivekananda’s instruction to his disciples to eat animal protein as it gives more energy and strength. Though it is not clear whether Vivekananda’s guru, Ramakrishna, was a meat-eater, several accounts show that he, as a Kali-worshipper, never declined prasad (offerings).
Thirdly, the history of Bengal’s political resistance towards orthodoxy during the 19th century is also laced with its culinary practices. Young Bengal, a group led by vibrant Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, used to celebrate beef eating as a way to challenge Hindu orthodoxy. While critics cite Western influence as a way to dismiss such acts, it is nevertheless true that it shattered, at least for a while, the caste supremacy of Bengali bhadraloks by their own who chose a different path than orthodoxy.
In 1831, Henry Meredith Parker, an Anglo-Indian poet, wrote a verse called “Young India: A Bengal Eclogue”, where he drew a contrast between two characters — Hurry Mohun Bose and Sam Chand. While Bose was represented as a beef eater, a progressive Bengali who was enlightened by Derozian ideas, Chand was the quintessential Bengali orthodox who never touched beef or alcohol. The contest between imaginary Bose and Chand shapes the Bengali imagination of progressiveness.
The man in the recent viral video, or for that matter, anyone who questions Bengali Hindus’ meatatarian spirituality, must understand our complex history. A politics rooted in Hindi heartland shouldn’t determine the practices of Bengali Hindus.
abhik.bhattacharya@expressindia.com
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