‘Different ways of worship’: Dilip Ghosh exposes BJP’s Bengal bind

The BJP’s uneasy balancing act between Bengal’s deeply rooted food traditions and its broader Hindutva politics has come into sharp relief, with party leader and minister Dilip Ghosh defending chief minister Suvendu Adhikari’s eating of fish bhog at Kolkata’s Kalighat temple, and saying religious practices should be left to individual choice.

Ghosh’s remarks came amid a simmering controversy over comments by Bageshwar Dham chief Dhirendra Krishna Shastri alias Bageshwar Baba, who recently urged Hindus in Bengal to shun non-vegetarian food during Navratri and Durga Puja.

“In many places, fish is offered as prasad in temples. There are different methods of worship, ways of life and personal preferences. So, this should not be a subject of discussion. Everyone should make their own decisions and be left to decide for themselves,” Ghosh told reporters on Saturday, 12 September.

The intervention is significant because it places a Bengal BJP leader squarely behind a tradition that sits uneasily alongside the more prescriptive dietary message delivered by a religious figure who has found considerable support among the BJP ecosystem, beginning with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The latest controversy began after Adhikari visited the Kalighat temple on the occasion of Kaushiki Amavasya and partook of the temple’s traditional bhog, which includes sweets, basanti pulao and fish.

For Bengal, where fish is woven not only into everyday cuisine but also several strands of religious and cultural practice, the image carried a significance that went beyond a temple meal.

Adhikari has defended the practice, maintaining that Hindu traditions are not uniform and that dietary customs can vary according to the deity, occasion and individual belief. He has also said he follows a sattvik diet during Mahashtami and the month of Kartik, while accepting non-vegetarian offerings to Goddess Kali. “I am a Sanatani Hindu,” Adhikari said, underscoring his argument that different religious occasions can entail different practices.

Ghosh’s defence follows a similar line: religion, in his formulation, leaves room for plurality rather than prescription.

Yet the controversy has exposed an awkward contrast within the BJP’s Bengal politics.

Days before the Kalighat episode, Bageshwar Baba, during his three-day Hanumant Katha programme at Liluah in Howrah, criticised the consumption of non-vegetarian food around Durga Puja pandals. “Please don't mind, but there is something I don't like about West Bengal,” he told devotees, objecting to the preparation and consumption of non-vegetarian food during Navratri and Durga Puja.

He went further, urging Hindus to “wake up” and remove those whom he described as sacrilegious.

The remarks triggered a backlash in Bengal, where fish and meat occupy a very different cultural space from the strictly vegetarian traditions followed by some Hindu communities elsewhere in the country.

BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya responded bluntly: “How can Bengalis not eat fish and meat?” He described Bageshwar Baba’s comments as his personal opinion.

That response, followed by Ghosh’s defence of fish bhog, has effectively drawn a line between the dietary prescriptions voiced by the religious leader and the political realities confronting the BJP in Bengal.

A message urging Hindus to give up non-vegetarian food may resonate with a section of the party’s wider ideological constituency. In Bengal, however, where fish is inseparable from the region’s culinary identity and where fish offerings are associated with certain Shakta traditions, such a prescription risks colliding with local religious customs.

Ghosh’s intervention reinforces that distinction. Rather than turning Adhikari’s fish bhog into a doctrinal question, he sought to return it to the realm of personal faith: different people worship differently, live differently and make their own choices.

Amid the backlash, Bageshwar Baba later clarified his remarks, saying he was not seeking to dictate what people should eat in their daily lives. He said his objection was specifically related to the consumption of non-vegetarian food around Durga Puja venues and reiterated his opposition to animal sacrifice and meat consumption in that religious context.

But the clarification has done little to erase the political controversy. The fact that Adhikari himself was scheduled to host Bageshwar Baba for dinner has added another layer to the episode, with the BJP leader’s public defence of Bengal’s food traditions coming alongside his engagement with a religious figure whose remarks have drawn criticism in the state.

What began as a dispute over fish bhog has thus grown into a larger argument over who defines Hindu practice in Bengal.

Ghosh’s message was clear: religious practice cannot be reduced to a single template.

But the controversy has also illuminated a political paradox. When a religious leader calls for dietary conformity, BJP leaders in Bengal emphasise individual choice; when Bengal’s traditional practices come under scrutiny, the same party foregrounds regional culture.

With agency inputs