On Wednesday, goddess Saraswati’s idol was kept for puja at the Government College of Art and Craft in Tripura, which sparked controversy when Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) complaint that it affected their religious sentiment and called the idol ‘vulgar’.
Controversy around Saraswati’s Idol
Pictures of the goddess Saraswati’s idol without a saree went viral on social media platforms. Soon after that ABVP, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), and Bajrang Dal supporters barged into the college premises and protested.
They forced the college authorities to drape goddess Saraswati’s idol with a saree. The idol was sculpted by the student of the college. According to ABVP, the idol of a goddess without a saree is vulgar, contrasts with the spirit of Indian culture, and hurts their religious sentiment.
Joint secretary of the ABVP unit of Tripura, Dibakar Acharjee led the protest and said, “We got to know that the goddess Saraswati sculpture at the Government College of Art and Craft is sculpted in very wrong and vulgar. We instantly reached the location and started our protest.” He added that they forced college authorities to stop the puja rituals and students to rap saree on the idol.
Reportedly, ABVP had urged Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha to take stringent action against the college authority. Assistant coordinator of VHP, Saurabh Das, said that the Government College of Art and Crafts has shown a lack of decorum and disrespect towards Hindu deities and VHP will not tolerate that.
Response of College Authority
Abhijit Bhattacharjee, Principal in charge of the government College of Art and Craft, said that the idol of goddess Saraswati had followed the sculpture style of different idols found in northern and southern India.
“We certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone’s sentiment. Some people protested against it and we agreed with them. We replaced the idol,” he added.
How does this Idol Contrast with the Spirit of Indian Culture?
With time, How we see Indian deities or gods has changed. these deities were first only seen in temples, but with the paintings of Raja Ravi Verma, the faces of these deities went to the masses and inspired a lot of calendar art. Ram became blue, fair skin became a thing, we started celebrating it, Krishna could be chubby and fair, Saraswati just wore a white saree and all this was Raja Ravi Verma’s interpretation of Indian stories and was inspired by the people he was seeing around him.
The blouse and petticoat were introduced in India by Britishers, both of which are English words and are very recent. Indian women did not cover their breasts before that period, women used to roam around topless, and even sculptures we see in temples have topless gods and goddesses.
In Khajuraho temple, Parvati’s sculpture has a heavy bosom, small cloth tied on her waist, beautiful jewelry on her body, and Shiva’s arms wrapping her body. India was never scared of women’s sexuality. We literally have a text on sex, Kamasutra.
Is this not a part of an Indian culture? So, How does the idol of Saraswati kept in the puja ritual contrast with Indian culture? These men protesting for their fragile sentiments are clearly not aware of Indian culture and tradition.
People’s sentiments get hurt very easily these days. The goddess idol becomes vulgar, people entering temples from other religions in a temple become objectional, demolition of mosques for building temple in the name of god is seen as victory and even what one eats, and what one wears is questioned and is considered harmful or hurtful.
These ideas of right and wrong come from conditioning and ignorance and only knowledge can help with that.