Women’s empowerment at heart of Delhi’s Durga Puja this year | Latest News Delhi
New Delhi
The Bengali community in the Capital has come together for the nine-day Durga Puja celebrations, not just to deck up pandals and hold festivities, but to raise awareness and seek social justice for the rape and murder of a woman doctor at the RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata on August 9 — a brutal incident that shook the entire nation.
People from the community said that the festival celebrates “Maa Durga”, who embodies feminine power, and they intend to use the platform to spread the message of female empowerment.
“Women empowerment is the central theme of this year’s puja, in light of the RG Kar Hospital case and we want to spread the message, using the high footfall at pandals,” Prodip Ganguly, general secretary of the Chittaranjan Park Kali Mandir Durga Puja Samiti, said.
Ganguly said that as usual — this is the 51st year that the Samiti will set up its pandal — competitions were being held in the run-up to Durga Puja for children and adults, but with the added message of social justice.
“We put up a huge poster at the competition talking about women empowerment and we had included a huge blank sheet right beside the poster for people to write their ideas and experiences about what we can do to address the root cause of the problem,” Ganguly said, citing it an attempt to “get the conversation started.”
Several other pandals across the city are following suit, citing the importance of women’s safety. “This year, we will be observing three minutes of silence before the puja proceedings begin to pay our respect to the RG Kar victim,” said Sujoy Ghosh, secretary of the Sarbojanin Puja Samiti in Chittaranjan Park.
Ghosh said that this is the 28th iteration of the festival his group would be celebrating and they will put up boards in Hindi, Bengali and English to raise awareness about women’s safety, centred around the RG Kar case, and also to highlight eco-friendly initiatives and green issues.
“The pandal will be made completely out of bamboo shoots. Awareness about environment is another burning issue and we want to highlight that as well,” Ghosh said.
Mrinal Biswas, president of Milani Cultural and Welfare Association in Mayur Vihar Phase-1, said that nearly 200 artists and school students have been invited to participate in a poster competition themed around “creating a safer world for women”.
“The posters will be displayed at the puja pandal,” Biswas said, adding, “Every evening, people visitors will be invited to take a pledge with us to stop discrimination on the basis of gender and to uphold the dignity of women in society.”
A group holding Durga Puja celebrations in Noida said they are taking initiatives to express gratitude to women.
“We have organised nearly 150 sarees from Bolpur, Shantiniketan, West Bengal for the women of our society. The sarees were made by local artisans from Bengal. We want to thank women and acknowledge the part they play in creating a better society,” Siddhartha Ghosh, part of the organising team, said.
Ghosh added that during the puja, cultural programmes featuring dance, plays and elocution have also been arranged on the theme of “Abhaya shokti tumi jaago (Fearless power, wake up)”.
“The programmes have been arranged as a call for justice for all victims of cases like that of the RG Kar one. The idols of Durga Maa and Asur are such that Asur is surrendering his weapons, which also emphasises on the other theme of this year ‘Temple of Peace & Harmony’, to symbolise the global call for peace amid the ongoing unrest,” Ghosh said.
