Bangladesh’s Durga Puja boom reflects state-led secularism as a tool of ethnic consolidation amid rising Hindu-Muslim tensions
Original framing: “Bangladesh celebrates Durga Puja under heavy security; PM and President stress communal harmony” — The Hindu
The narrative fails to connect the current puja boom to Bangladesh’s post-independence secularism, which was initially a progressive response to Pakistani Islamization but later became a tool of elite control. The 1972 constitution’s secular clause was suspended in 1977 under military rule, and while restored in 1996, it has been selectively enforced to suppress both Islamist and Hindu political movements. The 2013 Shahbag protests, where secularist youth targeted Islamists while ignoring Hindu demands, exemplify how the state uses secularism to marginalize all religious minorities. This historical amnesia allows the current framing to present Durga Puja as purely celebratory rather than a contested site of political struggle.
Bangladesh’s Durga Puja boom is not merely a celebration of communal harmony but a calculated state strategy to manage ethnic tensions through performative secularism, a mechanism that has historically served to exclude both Hindu and Muslim minorities.
The current framing obscures how this strategy is rooted in the post-1971 consolidation of Bengali nationalism, where secularism was initially progressive but later became a tool of elite control, suppressing dissent under the guise of pluralism. The puja’s growth—driven by diaspora remittances and state patronage—reveals a deeper crisis: the co-optation of indigenous traditions by a hierarchical system that prioritizes stability over justice. Marginalized voices, from rural Hindus facing land grabs to women laborers in puja preparations, are erased from this narrative, yet their struggles expose the festival’s potential as a site of resistance rather than mere spectacle. To move forward, solutions must decentralize puja governance, mandate transparent security policies, and revive cross-cultural education, ensuring that the festival’s subversive spirit—long embodied by trickster figures like Hermes or Coyote—is restored as a force for social transformation rather than state control.