Right Wing Narratives
Mahua Moitra: I will not tiptoe around religion just because everyone is scared to take on the BJP’s narrative of a homogenous faith https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/mahua-moitra-interview-kali-remarks-row-bjp-tmc-8024825/ Ravik BhattacharyaJuly 13, 2022
My statement was one of fact and experience of how Ma Kali is venerated by her devotees and what she represents to me. I don’t see any controversy in this whatsoever. The controversy is the false sentiment of the BJP and its trolls whose agenda is to divide the citizens of this country using religion as a tool. They want to impose their programme of a monolithic idea of Hinduism on every Hindu and will decide who is a Hindu and who isn’t, and how our gods and goddesses are to be worshipped.
I have had enough of this nonsense from the BJP where truth, logic and reason have been replaced by sheer absurdity. I will stand up to their hypocrisy and defend my faith.
Why temples offer fish, meat to Goddess Kali in Bengal https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/kali-meat-fish-bengal-dakshineswar-tarapith-kalighat-1972669-2022-07-06 Indrajit Kundu July 6, 2022
There are hundreds of Kali temples across Bengal and innumerable legends associated with each one of them. But there are some consistent rituals that form the core of Kali worship in the eastern state.
Kalighat, Kolkata the meat is cooked and offered to devotees as prasad. However, the Devi here is offered a vegetarian spread while her accomplices - Dakini and Yogini - are given the non-veg procured from the sacrifice.
Post by SS: This time, the relentless attacks on Islam, and Christianity, have crossed the border and the subsidiary, or "little", Hindu traditions are being openly targeted.
That's how "Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan!" eventually works out.
The second Mahua Moitra of India Today Conclave East 2022 spoke on issues like the documentary film 'Kali' and the arrest of fact checker Zubair. During this, he said that for him there is a goddess who accepts the flesh and liquor of Kali. https://youtube.com/embed/h6YA0uqBlBU?start=738&end=865
Trinamool's Mahua Moitra On Kali Remark: "BJP Can File All The FIRs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoG_w8ZQFMg Jul 6, 2022 Mahua Moitra & Kaali poster controversy: Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra dared the BJP on Wednesday to prove her comment about Goddess Kali being a "meat-eating and alcohol-accepting goddess" was wrong.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/politics/snub-from-tmc-support-from-tharoor-and-firs-under-fire-for-kali-remark-mahua-moitra-says-bring-it-on/ar-AAZfF3I Moitra found some support from Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who said “what devotees offer as bhog says more about them than about the Goddess”. He added that the forms of worship vary widely across the country. “We have reached a stage where no one can say anything publicly about any aspect of religion without someone claiming to be offended,” Tharoor wrote on Twitter. “It’s obvious that Mahua Moitra wasn’t trying to offend anyone.
Twitter: Mahua Moitra @MahuaMoitra
Bring it on BJP!
Am a Kali worshipper. I am not afraid of anything. Not your ignoramuses. Not your goons. Not your police. And most certainly not your trolls.
Truth doesn’t need back up forces.
Facebook: Shuddhabrata Sengupta: 5th July 2022
Mahua Moitra is an intelligent and dignified person. She should leave the Trinamool Congress, which has become a party of spineless sycophants who cannot defend her, their most able parliamentary representative, against the onslaught of the idiots of Hindutva.
Mahua Moitra, as every Bengali knows, said nothing wrong, whatsoever, in her remarks at the India Today Conclave East 2022 - about how Kali is traditionally worshipped. And what she has said is not insulting, either to how Kali is imagined by her devotees according to their faiths and beliefs, or to the various strands of faith and practice that constitute what is called Hinduism today.
Those who think that she has insulted either the figure of the goddess Kali, or the devotees of Kali, are either ignorant fools (in the BJP and the Hindutva camp) or hypocrites (in her own party, the Trinamool Congress).
I dare anyone to prove otherwise.
"All India Trinamool Congress: Twitter The comments made by @MahuaMoitra at the IndiaTodayConclaveEast2022 and her views expressed on Goddess Kali have been made in her personal capacity and are NOT ENDORSED BY THE PARTY in ANY MANNER OR FORM. All India Trinamool Congress strongly condemns such comments.
Millie Khanna:I am not even Bengali and I can tell you, just by living close to Chitto park and attending annual pujo, that what Mahua Moitra is saying is true for Bengalis. I am surprised at TMC condemning this comment. Why can’t Mamata didi do a Modi-on-bigotry and just stay quiet… you know, get pics clicked with some family member, pics of reading books, tilling the soil, meeting some random dignitary or spiritual VIP… why condemn when you can play dumb through the whole thing…
Sam Thomas: Why should the party have a view of religion and religiosity? They are there to serve people and not to indulge in religiosity.
Ritwik Bhattacharjee:
If Mahua Moitra leaves the TMC, she has to retire from politics. Does she join the Congress, the leader of which displays his sacred thread to affirm his Brahminic bloodline? The entire Indian political scene has displaced to another place where parties like the Congress and the TMC have to balance it out (even where it's not needed). Most prime time news shows were running the caption "TMC is anti-Hindu" last night. And like it or not, a majority of Indians and most Hindu "educated Indians" lack any sort of intellectual depth as they take pride in a pan-Hindu (North/West Indian Hindu) identity and a cooked-up past glory.
Chaman Lal: There is a huge row on a particular function in a year at Kali Temple Patiala when thousands of Hindus and Sikhs from town and more from rural side when they offer a bottle of Desi daru and a bakra to priest.... of temple
Dialogue, With Care by John Dayal 27 Jun 2022 https://www.indiancurrents.org/article-dialogue-with-care-john-dayal-1248.php
Bishop Dabre’s original statement was aggravated by Catholic media interviewers who recorded him saying “I am not an RSS spokesperson or its defender. In truth, I have demanded a dialogue between the Church and the RSS which Indian Bishops had proposed.” “The Christian Community accepts RSS ideology and principles. We need to establish communication and coordination between Christians and the (Rashtriya Swayamsewak) Sangh,” another interviewer wrote.
Dialogue is a great thing... Coming back to dialogue and lexicons, alas, when the RSS says nationalism, it means a very militant and majoritarian nationalism. The RSS is not a religious body, and it is not a political party. It is a multi-headed and aggressive organisation whose political face, the Bhartiya Janata Party, has been ruling India since 2014 with Mr Modi as Prime Minister...
Also, the Church surely knows that the one thing the founding fathers of the RSS held even more vehemently than their supremacist Hindutva was their visceral hatred for followers of Christianity and Islam.
RSS documents are clear that people of these two communities have no place in Bharat, that is India. They would have to accept second class status if they want to live in this Bharat...Would the RSS want to have a dialogue on the damage such a doctrine of Hindu Rashtra, with no equity for Muslims and Christians, can do to India?
There is a right wing narrative that those speaking about caste discrimination are Hindu-phobic. In India the Right wing tries to portray it as attempt to divide Hindu Society and worse still the Hindu vote. However , prejudice against historically suppressed communities, who seek their liberation is the main issue.
In America, as in India, Talking Caste is not Hindu-Phobic https://www.newsclick.in/In-America-India-Talking-Caste-Hindu-Phobic Subhash Gatade 06 Jun 2022 https://www.newsclick.in/In-America-India-Talking-Caste-Hindu-Phobic
Recently, Google News cancelled a scheduled talk by Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the founder and executive director of Equality Labs, after many Google employees (of Indian origin or Indians) opposed it.
Thenmozhi was subjected to an organised campaign led by a section of Google employees, who called her “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu”. Thenmozhi and her organisation consistently raised a voice against the exclusion and discrimination of Dalits in the United States.
In 2005, there was a commotion over caste as petitions from human rights groups and counter-petitions from Hindutva supremacist groups struggled for its inclusion and exclusion (respectively). The rights groups won that debate, sort of, but by 2015, the discourse peddled by so-called spiritual-cultural organisations started to gain the upper hand. Conservative Hindu American Foundation (HAF), a non-profit with roots in the World Hindu Council America, pushed through the dilution or erasure of caste from syllabi. It also watered down the significant role caste plays in Hindu societies and erased Dalit, Muslim, Sikh and Christian histories in textbooks. However, earlier this year, caste was included in the entire California State system as a ground in its non-discrimination policy. This means that the biggest public university system in the United States, with 500,000-odd students on 23 campuses, now will address caste bias. Indeed, the California State school syllabus is not as egalitarian as it can be. It saniitises caste concerns, but such changes show that the resistance is also growing.
What is happening in the United States is a battle of ideas, where substantive issues of justice and equality are battling phoney notions of unity that push social fissures under the carpet. This battle is opening up new vistas to discuss and end caste discrimination decisively.
See the testimony of Tanuja Gupta http://emeets.lnwr.in/index.php/2513-testimony-of-tanuja-gupta-full-text-of-the-google-caste-issues-and-her-sacking