What began as a dazzling cultural showcase turned into a full-blown political melodrama and at the centre of it all stood one woman: Jaya Ahsan.
The Bangladeshi superstar, celebrated for her artistry on both sides of the border, took the stage at the Durgapur Durga Puja Carnival on Saturday, October 4, as a special guest, serenading thousands with a hauntingly beautiful Rabindra Sangeet.
The crowd swayed, the lights shimmered and then the politics exploded.
By dawn, the BJP’s Durgapur unit was in outrage mode. Their grievance? That a “foreign national” had been given a prime spot at a Hindu religious festival.
Within hours, saffron flags were replaced by black ones. Party workers formed human chains, shouted slogans, and in an operatic climax, burned Jaya Ahsan’s photo outside the Sub-Divisional Officer’s residence.
“This is an insult to Ma Durga and to Bengali identity,” thundered Chandrashekhar Banerjee, BJP’s district vice-president. “Why overlook our own artists for a Bangladeshi just to add glamour? This is cultural appeasement, and we want the SDO’s resignation!”
The Trinamool Congress (TMC), meanwhile, turned defence into a standing ovation. Narendranath Chakraborty, TMC MLA from Durgapur, shot back with a line straight out of a Tagore play: “Art has no religion, no border, no citizenship. Those who see it through the prism of politics are not traditional — they’re trapped in prejudice.”
He called Jaya Ahsan a “shining symbol of shared Bengali heritage” and reminded the crowd of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s motto: “Sabar Pujo, Sabar Utsab” — everyone’s festival belongs to everyone.
But beneath the chants and hashtags lies a delicious irony. Jaya Ahsan, born in Kolkata and raised in Dhaka, embodies a cultural bridge that politics keeps trying to burn. Her art travels seamlessly across Bengal’s divided map, but her passport, it seems, still makes her fair game in the firepit of identity politics.
As Durgapur’s festive lights flicker against a backdrop of protests, the episode feels less like a carnival and more like a scripted political soap opera, complete with a heroine, villains, and a crowd divided between devotion and drama.
For now, the message is clear: in West Bengal’s puja season, even a song can spark a political inferno, and Jaya Ahsan — willingly or not — has just taken centre stage in the state’s most-watched performance.