Representative illustration.

KOLKATA: Political parties in the former Marxist citadel of West Bengal are of late recalling Hindu religious motifs to spread their views.

While Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) plans to celebrate Janmashtami in the land of Chaitanya on September 2, after Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti , for consolidation of the broader Hindu ‘samaj’, the ruling Trinamool and Left Front partners will be organising rakhi bandhan utsav across the state on August 26 to spread the message of communal harmony.

“Our party will be organising rakhi bandhan programmes across the state that day. We are taking the cue from Tagore, who had invoked rakhi bandhan in 1905 to inspire love and amity between Hindus and Muslims after the British divided Bengal, a province of British India then, on religious lines,” said Trinamool secretary general Partha Chatterjee.

Left Front, too, is taking up similar programmes that day. “Left mass organisations will be organising the programme at 20 places in the city. This is nothing new. Women and student-youth organisations have been doing it for years,” CPM Kolkata district secretary Kallol Majumdar said. The programme, Majumdar added, had gained significance in the context of the bigotry being spread by BJP and its mass organisations to take Bengal back to 1905.

VHP, on the other hand, wants to make Janmashtami a social festival in Bengal. “We will take out religious rallies and offer prayers to Lord Krishna that day,” VHP spokesperson Sourish Mukherjee said. Asked if VHP would remember Lord Krishna as an administrator or offer prayers to Him as Bengal households observe the occasion (Radhakrishna leela), he said: “We will do it here following Bengal’s own traditions.”

