Overview
- Dhirendra Krishna Shastri urged Bengalis to avoid non-vegetarian food near Durga Puja and called those who ate meat “pakhandi” during a Liluah event on September 5–6, provoking widespread anger in the state.
- The Congress filed complaints across West Bengal and some protesters burned Shastri’s photographs, prompting Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday to tell the Kolkata Police commissioner to arrest those responsible.
- An FIR was registered at Bhawanipore police station over the alleged poster burning and the state Congress reported at least one party activist, Atanu Das, was arrested as police opened an investigation.
- Adhikari visited Kolkata’s Kalighat Temple and partook of the traditional fish bhog, an act the BJP used to reject any attempt to dictate Bengali dietary customs and to present a local cultural rebuttal to the preacher’s call.
- The episode highlights a wider fault line between visiting pan‑Hindu preachers and entrenched Bengali ritual practices, and it risks shaping festival‑season political mobilisation and further legal or street-level confrontations before Durga Puja.