Digha's Jagannath Temple inauguration is TMC's Ram Temple moment
The Trinamool chairperson arrived in the tourist town in Purba Medinipur district a day earlier and has been personally supervising the last-minute arrangements for Wednesday's 'Prana Pratistha (consecration ceremony)' for which invitations have been extended to top State officials, industry captains, religious heads of almost every Hindu order in West Bengal, apart from senior Trinamool leaders.
The town has been decked up with lights and yellow 'Jai Jagannath' flags, and a devotional song praising Lord Jagannath, composed by the Chief Minister, is being played at every intersection.
The party leadership has been directed to ensure that the consecration ceremony is livestreamed on giant screens in every locality of the State. AI-generated profile pictures of most of the TMC leaders have flooded social media.
In the highly polarised political landscape of West Bengal, the Jagannath Temple is the ruling party's answer to the allegations of being 'fake-Hindu' levelled at it by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 'Jai Jagannath' is going to be the Trinamool's answer to the BJP's war cry of'Jai Shri Ram'.
The much-awaited inauguration of the temple, a replica of the shrine in Puri, is, in other words, the Trinamool's Ram Temple moment.
'Soft Hindutva'
While Ms. Banerjee has renovated temples in the past and installed skywalks at Kolkata's famous Kalighat and Dakshineswar temples, the inauguration of Jagannath Temple makes a further push at burnishing the Trinamool's 'soft Hindutva' credentials. The party, which awards a monthly honorarium to imams and muezzins and awards incentives worth hundreds of crores every year to Durga Puja committees in the State, has never shied away from mixing religion with politics. With the temple in Digha, the TMC wants to take on the BJP at its own game by building its support base among Hindus while offsetting religious polarisation.
The construction of the temple also provides direct evidence of 'competitive communalism' of the ruling party and the BJP, which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been accusing both parties of for the past several years.
Even as the Chief Minister inaugurates the mega temple, built over 20 acres, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari will launch a parallel drive to renovate temples damaged during the riots in Murshidabad.
Temple wars
The temple wars between the Trinamool and the BJP could not have come at a worse time. Nearly three weeks ago, West Bengal witnessed one of its worst episodes of communal riots, which claimed three lives and left hundreds homeless. The Dhulian and Samserganz areas of Murshidabad are still tense, even as over 300 have been arrested for their alleged role in the violence.
The clashes left a deep scar not only on those who suffered them first-hand, but also on the psyche of West Bengal's public at large, which firmly holds that the State's foundations were laid on the ideals of fraternity and brotherhood.
2026 election
Senior leaders of the BJP, which lost the 2021 Assembly election to the Trinamool despite a high-pitch campaign, have been saying that all they need to come to power in the 2026 poll is an additional 5% of the Hindu community's votes.
The Trinamool Congress hopes to win over the community ahead of next year's election by bringing Lord Jagannath from Puri to West Bengal.
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