Bengal's disaster recipe: Communal contest over Durga puja and Muharram processions

Has communal hatred seeped into the Bengali-speaking middle-class psyche?

Durga puja is the most popular festival in West Bengal. Politicians of all hues usually suspend their mutual bickering and agitations mid-autumn and focus on public relations in and around puja pandals. Among the traditional rivals, nationalists of the Congress and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) variety flex their political and financial muscles to put on ostentatious pujas in their paras (neighbourhoods). The old-styled competitive extortion of chanda (donation) has now largely been replaced by contests over corporate sponsorship in Bengal’s big towns. The Left leaders enjoy inhaling this especially aromatic opium of the masses, but prefer to hang up