The Politics of Durga Puja: Killing Tripuri Identity In Tripura
By:RK Debbarma, Category: General, Posted on:2005-10-17 00:11:03


This year Durga Puja celebration by the 'tribals' in Tripura hogged headlines in www.tripurainfo.com and few other news websites. Tripurainfo.com carried out two gripping stories of Tripura 'tribals' durga puja celebration: Puja in killing field (oct.9) and Durga puja in tribal areas with tribal cultural ambiance (Oct.10). Equally absorbing were two other stories 'Durga returns to Tripura's killing fields' (Manas Paul) in indiatimes.com (Oct.6) and 'Militant-hit Tripura celebrates Durga Puja with tribal ambiance' (Pinnaki Das) in Keralanext.com (Oct.6). They have one theme to convey: Tripuris i.e. the 'tribals' are defying the militants prohibitions and celebrating the durga puja in nostalgia and are willing to embrace their 'missed Bengali neighbors'. Explicit in this theme are two ingredients: one, message of common peoples' desire for peace; and two, Bengali intellectuals project of portraying the Tripuri-Bengali contradictions as unreal, a construction of the 'demented militants', because both the community celebrate the same festivals and lived and shared common lives as neighbors. This article is a respond to these stories and seeks to demolish the Bengali journalists and Bengali-owned media myth-making narrations.

Religious symbols encapsulates powerful political tools which have been - in all societies, in all histories used as instruments of nationalist constructions which can have both positive consequent and negative repercussions. Positively it can mould nationalistic consciousness in pre modern societies. And negatively it can lead to dominant communities imposing their culture, religion and festivals on minorities leading to cultural colonialism through 'cultural bastardization' of the ethnic minorities. Cultural bastardization implies the rendering of minority cultures as either uncivilized or inferior and forcing them through government policies to either incorporate the dominant culture or completely do away with their (minority) culture thereby establishing the superior-construct of the dominant culture. And thus deleting or narrowing the gap between the two, which allows for consensual domination of the minority without they realizing the subjugation. These 'durga puja stories' under discussion aims to achieve this political goal of 'cultural bastardization' of the Tripuris by rendering them as 'backward tribals' who have come to embrace the superior Bengali culture.

Frankly, I have no problem with Tripuris celebrating or taking part in the Bengali festivals. In fact this should be encouraged and taken as progressive. My objection is this: Tripuris instead of taking part in the festival have began to own the festival of the dominator. This 'owning of the festival of the dominator' raises serious question about the very survival and future of the Tripuri identity. This 'owning' of durga puja by certain sections of Tripuris, especially among the Debbarmas and Jamatias are symptomatic of depth of 'cultural bastardization', which has the potential to mutate as dangerous pathogen which will accelerate the gradual decay of our culture, our society and erase our Tripuri identity in the near future. This is why this owning of Bengali goddesses and their festivals need to be contextually placed and opposed. It is this sole reason what prompted me to render my strong, perhaps jingoistic, opposition to the news features. One can endure the feudalistic attitude of the story-narrators, what jabs harder to one's 'Tripuri Pride' is the colonized mentality and bastardized attitude of the protagonists of the story: the people who have embraced goddess durga as their own. One Mr. Bipul Debbarma, Secretary of Aitorma Club (Mandai) says 'we are trying to preserve our distinctive identity and tradition through durga puja' ( Tripurainfo.com, Oct. 10) and another new proud owner of durga in Takarjala nostalgically laments Jampuijala once exuded the 'best example of mix culture and communal fraternity'. Both the statements are indicative the organizers (the clubs) lack of understanding of neither history nor identity. My question to Mr. Bipul Debbarma is: How can you preserve your culture by owning the culture of others? And my friend in Jampuijala who rues the oust of his 'Bengali neighbors' has misconceived the idea of 'mix culture': Bengalinization of our social existence is not a mix culture. Mix culture implies coming together of two cultures thereby bringing forth a new superior culture, which both the culture shares and owns. Bengalis are one people who never assimilate different culture instead wherever they have settled they invariably sought to impose their culture, their festival and their language on others. This is one reason why they are hated everywhere they have settled. What we are witnessing in Tripura is not the emergence of mix culture rather hegemonic imposition of majority culture on the ethnic minority. How is this 'owning' an imposition? And how have durga puja been politicized? Lets get the facts right. Organizing a durga puja is big expenditure. No 'tribal' club in the countryside got the money to organize a puja of this magnitude. So who is funding them? The fund came from two sources: one collections or what is ordinary language is called chadda; two, the ruling party politicians were directed to divert and disburse funds to these clubs or groups from various sources on one condition that the goddess should be indigenized i.e. she should wear a tribal face and attired in kanboroks. So you know who is funding these pujas. But why are they doing it? This is where politics comes in: the hidden agenda of the government. One has to peer deeper, probe beneath the layers of veiled seeming generosities of the government and the ruling Bengali elites. In a nutshell the hidden agenda is this: over the past few years the contradictions between the Tripuris and Bengalis have gotten sharper, decades of bengalinisation projects have been crumbling piece by piece portending further polarization and aggravation of ethnic conflict in the state. This discreet funding of durga puja is part of the frenetic efforts to white wash this contradictions by projecting Tripuri and Bengali society as one, more precisely, Tripuris as part of the Bengali society. This is the reason why the indigenous people of Tripura are described as 'tribals' who are adopting the 'more advanced culture' of the society. Nowhere, neither in the government policies nor in the writings of Bengali intellectuals we are described as 'Tripuris'. Thus it is the difference and contradictions, which is sought to be obliterated or covered up. And it is towards this project Bengali journalists and their media carried out the above-mentioned gripping stories of their 'tribal' brothers organizing durga puja. And why are these 'tribal' youths behaves in ways which demean our distinct identity and demean our culture. Perhaps the explanation lies in Frank Fanon (in Wretched of the Earth) psychoanalysis that certain behaviors and attitudes in the colonized minds are conditioned by our social conditions. Our social conditions have generated complex 'false consciousness' in us that we tend to own the culture of the dominator whom we are conditioned to perceive as superior. This explains why our clubs have never organized any indigenous festival, but they do organize and celebrate Saraswati puja, Durga puja, and Bishwakarma.

But the question is: can durga puja wipe out Tripuri-Bengali contradictions? Can durga puja heal the ethnic conflict in the state? When the state itself is structured and founded on domination of Tripuris and the contradictions have been systematized it is doubtful if durga puja can eliminate the ethnic divide. For as long as the state itself is structured on domination and exclusion of Tripuris conflicts will be permanent feature of the state. The politicalscape of Tripura portends violence and conflict of greater magnitude. Folk singer Satyaram Reang while receiving the Sangeet Natak Academy Award in September expressed his 'deep anguish and sorrow over senseless killings and mindless violence' in Tripura (nenanews.com, September, 2005) But a state where 'senseless killings' and 'mindless violence' have become order of the day something is seriously wrong with the state. It is this 'serious wrong' of the state our people have failed to understand. The state,
Controlled by Bengalis who wields legitimate instrument of violence, the police and other coercive state apparatus, have inflicted a silent structural violence on our society for decades. When the state itself has become instrument of the dominator how do we resist the domination?

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