Breaking the shackles of caste-based discrimination, practiced in a rural pocket of West Bengal for nearly three centuries, representatives of 130 Dalit families for the first time set foot inside the Gidheshwar Shiv Temple in Purba Bardhaman district on Wednesday, officials confirmed.
A group of five members of Das families -- four women and a man -- from Gidhgram village's Daspara area in the district's Katwa subdivision climbed the steps of the temple around 10 am, poured milk and water on the Shivling and offered prayers to Mahadev without obstruction, amidst the presence of local administrative officials and personnel from the local police station deployed around the shrine to prevent any law and order problems.
PTI had reported on Saturday how the Dalit families, all having 'Das' surnames and belonging to the traditional community of cobblers and weavers, were fighting an uneven battle against majority villagers to exercise their fundamental fight to worship at the Gidheswar Shiv Temple, believed to have been founded some 300 years ago.
The families, which had planned to break tradition and offer prayers at the temple during the Maha Shivratri festival on February 26, had not only been driven away from the temple premises on grounds that they belonged to "low caste", they also faced economic isolation from a significant section of villagers following their move to seek help of the local administration and police to carry out their plans to worship at the temple, PTI had further reported.
Happy and relieved by the day's development, the families thanked the administration and police for their "active intervention and cooperation," but expressed uncertainty about whether the effort to end the bigotry would be long-lasting.
"We are ecstatic to have been granted the right to perform puja at the temple. I prayed to God for everyone's well being," said Santosh Das, a villager who was previously disbarred from setting foot on temple steps.
"We received tremendous support from the local police and administration on whom we had reposed our faith," Ekkori Das, another villager chipped in, adding, "We hope we haven't spoken too soon. The village heads have agreed to the arrangement under administrative pressure. We have to see whether the temple doors remain open for us even after the police deployment is removed."
The villagers confirmed that stoppage of dairy milk procurement from the Das families, enforced for the past few days as a means for economic exclusion from the village, have remained in place till Wednesday morning.
"Police have directed the milk procurement centres to start collecting milk from domesticated cattle owned by us. If the collection doesn't resume by this evening, we will have to report to the authorities," Ekkori said.
Although interventions from police and administration to convince village elders and temple servants to allow the Dalit families to pray at the temple had previously failed to break the ice, multiple rounds of talks over the last few days with stakeholders, including the latest one on Tuesday, held at the office of the local subdivisional officer, Ahimsa Jain, seemed to have resolved the impasse.
"The problem that existed regarding worship in the temple in Gidhgram has been resolved. The residents of Daspara in that village will also be able to offer puja like others. From Wednesday, everyone will offer puja in the temple. Everyone has accepted this decision," SDO had said after the meeting.
The meeting was attended by Rabindranath Chatterjee and Apurba Chowdhury, Katwa and Mangalkot MLAs respectively, block administration officials and senior police personnel, besides representatives of Gidheshwar temple committee and those of the Das community.
Sanat Mandal, a temple servant, agreed that he had to "accept the decision with reluctance".
"We used to take care of everything at the temple during the period of Gajan (a folk festival attributed to fertility) fair. It is now a big question on whether we will be able to maintain the purity and sanctity of the ancient tradition of puja at the temple," Mandal said.
The political fraternity, though, sounded upbeat.
"It wasn't easy to break the deadlock arising out of a long-standing tradition. Standing in the 21st century, such ideas cannot be entertained. God is with everyone. Together, we managed to convince everyone of this. That is what has resolved the dispute," Trinamool Congress MLA Apurba Chatterjee said.
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