Kolkata: Goddess Durga, along with her entourage will be part of the Republic Day parade in New Delhi this year. The theme of the Republic Day parade is women’s empowerment and Goddess Durga will be the symbol of that empowerment.
According to sources in the Information and Cultural Affairs department, the state had proposed the Durga theme after Unesco in December 2021 had included Durga Puja on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee celebrated this in the Durga Puja carnival in 2022, which was also held after two years of Covid curbs.
The tableau will show the Goddess and her family – Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartik and Ganesh being framed with riverbed clay, and how on the inaugural day of the 10-day festival - Mahalaya - the Goddess’s eyes are painted on. The aim is to showcase how Durga Puja celebrations unite people from all walks of life irrespective of caste, creed and religion. There might be some women drummers in the tableau, along with four women blowing conches to welcome Goddess Durga.
There are two major stages in the selection of tableaus- the design stage and the model stage. There is an expert committee which holds a series of meetings in connection with the tableaus. “We have already passed the model stage and the expert committee has directed some changes which were done accordingly. Now, we are in the model stage and the last meeting was held just a few days ago. Based on the feedback, we are hopeful that the Durga Puja tableau will debut at the Republic Day parade in the capital,” an official in the Information and Cultural Affairs department said.
In 2022, the Centre did not approve the Netaji tableau proposal from the Bengal government. Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protest against this issue.