Chaddis invoke Vishnu's Matsya avatar, threaten Bengalis to stop eating fish

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Chaddis invoke Vishnu's Matsya avatar, threaten Bengalis to stop eating fish

by Guest Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:49 am

Now, a new organisation calling itself the ‘All India Fish Protection Committee’ has emerged on social media, threatening Bengalis who eat fish with a brutal thrashing. Religion is invoked by mentioning Matsya, one of the ten avatars of Vishnu. To most Bengalis, all this is very comical. Some have responded that the silvery Hilsa in the memes is perfect to be converted into a nice, smoked fish.

But beyond all this humour, something serious – and worrying – is brewing. For many Bengalis, this goes beyond resisting a political party; now it is a matter of preserving the liberal culture of Bengal from the assault of the conservative Hindustani cow belt culture. On Saturday, the state BJP president Dilip Ghosh – an MLA from Kharagpur – at a seminar at the Jadavpur University declared that he would lead a Ram Navami rally on April 5 with tridents and swords. Ram Navami celebration is a recent import into Bengal and the worship of Ram is not popular in Bengal, like it is in North India. Many are seeing this publicly announced rally – with swords and tridents – as a ploy to impose Hindustani cow belt culture on the liberal fabric of Bengal. Many Bengalis are offended and appalled at this attempt at socio-cultural engineering. A Hindu identity is being hammered into the minds to polarise people.

The BJP’s campaign is likely to boomerang. It doesn’t pay to be anti-fish in Bengal. The carrot and stick politics of BJP where the carrot is the mythical ‘development’ and the stick is ‘hate against anti-Hindus, seculars, Muslims, targeted intellectuals, anti-nationals and political opposition’ might stumble badly like Machli Baba of Ray’s Joi Baba Felunath, if the party is foolish enough to deny the Bengali his fish.

A vegetarian Hindu Rashtra with anti-Romeo vigilantism and a regressive ultra-conservative mindset is not the idea of Bengal or indeed of India. They are repulsed by this idea and want to resist it by safeguarding liberal culture.

Bengal is one of the large bastions which has resisted Hindutva ideology and stopped its surge in Bengal after 2014. If Bengal falls, India will fall, is the common feeling amongst the liberals and the progressives in Kolkata. The soul of Bengalis is related to ponds, rivers, ocean and fish. If something fishy happens there, there is no chance of BJP advancing beyond its support base for a long time to come.

https://thewire.in/120787/in-bengal-the-bjp-goes-after-two-icons-tagore-and-fish/

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