Sitting atop her lion, the Hindu goddess Durga wields a celestial weapon in every of her 10 arms. But her goal isn’t the standard demon of deceit, Mahishasura.
She’s taking goal at a totally different perceived foe representing the forces of evil: a placing determine with a blond coif, a rippling torso and a face modeled on US President Donald Trump.
Unveiled final week within the jap Indian state of West Bengal in the course of the Hindu pageant of Durga Puja, referred to as Durga Pujo by Bengali Hindus, the sculpture’s symbolism was inconceivable to disregard.
In a celebration that honors the triumph of fine over evil, the statue was extra than simply political satire. It was a image of a as soon as tightly woven friendship now frayed by Trump’s makes an attempt to reshape global trade.
“India and America had good relations previously but ever since Trump has come, he’s trying to suppress India, to push us over, to squash us,” Sanjay Basak, a member of the organizing committee of the Durga Puja installment within the metropolis of Murshidabad, informed NCS. “That’s why we have depicted Trump as this demon, vanquished by the powerful mother Durga.”
During the five-day pageant of Durga Puja, whole cities rework into a sprawling, open-air artwork gallery the place the mythological battle between the goddess and her demon is reimagined to mirror modern anxieties.
Over the years, these installations have tackled all the things from the migrant disaster to wars with neighboring Pakistan.
“Osama Bin Laden had been a popular choice post 9/11,” mentioned Sushovan Sircar, a guide who makes social media reels about Bengali tradition and spends his time between New Delhi and Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state.
After lethal border clashes between India and China in 2020, one other set up famously depicted Chinese chief Xi Jinping within the villain’s function, pushing the boundaries of diplomatic commentary by way of non secular artwork.
“It is in this vein that a pandal (pavilion) decided to depict Trump as an asur (demon), as an ostensible expression of a popular sentiment of the people,” Sircar mentioned.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion.
Six years in the past, Trump stood hand in hand with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Houston’s NRG Stadium as thunderous chants from 50,000 folks celebrated two right-wing populists with a shared aptitude for turning diplomatic relations into grand spectacles.
The present of political partnership referred to as the “Howdy Modi!” rally was mirrored on the subsequent “Namaste Trump” occasion in Ahmedabad in Gujarat the next February, solidifying a public narrative of a seemingly unbreakable private alliance.
But recently their friendship has been examined by Trump’s return to workplace.
Earlier this 12 months, Trump publicly derided New Delhi, labeling the Indian financial system as “dead” whereas imposing a few of the administration’s highest-ever tariffs on the nation.
Half of the 50% levies are Trump’s punishment for India’s ramped-up purchases of Russian oil following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The different half are a part of Trump’s signature “America First” marketing campaign to scale back US commerce deficits.
India shot again, calling the tariffs “unfair” and “unjustified,” whereas stating the hypocrisy of Trump’s transfer. US and Europe, it mentioned, nonetheless commerce with Russia on different merchandise reminiscent of fertilizers and chemical substances.
But the Trump administration doubled down. A White House official in August described Russia’s battle in Ukraine as “Modi’s war,” ramping up strain on New Delhi to chop financial ties with the Kremlin. India repeatedly defended its purchases of Russian crude and called the assertion “inaccurate and misleading.”
Then in September, Trump’s shock order to impose a $100,000 payment for H-1B visa purposes felt to many like a private assault on Indian expertise and ambition, as the most important group of beneficiaries of the skilled-worker program.
It is that this sense of betrayal that discovered a potent creative outlet within the type of the demon statue.
“Trump as Mahishasura is serving a political message to the people who are visiting the pandal (pavilion) and the mass media organizations who are covering it,” mentioned Kolkata resident Tuneer Mukherjee.
This mixing of artwork and politics is attribute of Bengali tradition, he mentioned, providing a easy however highly effective message: Trump and his administration’s “regressive agenda” have develop into the fashionable demon to be slain by the divine mom, Durga.
For three months, Basak, from the organizing committee of the Trump set up, mentioned their staff labored in near-total secrecy, a deliberate tactic to create a component of suspense forward of its reveal.
“The identity of the demon was a closely guarded secret,” he mentioned. So intently, in truth, that the ultimate, unmistakable options of Trump had been solely sculpted within the final seven days, hidden from view till the ultimate second.
When a video of the finished set up surfaced on-line, the response was electrical, mentioned Basak. “Thousands and thousands” of individuals flocked to the pavilion, forming queues that snaked by way of the neighborhood, he added.
For Basak, the overwhelming turnout was validation. “It really is something that resonated with a lot of people,” he mentioned, “or at least, something everyone wanted to see for themselves.”
In West Bengal, artwork has by no means been nearly ornament; it’s a language for dialogue, a weapon for dissent, and the first medium for social and political debate.
As a hotbed of resistance in opposition to its British colonizers, Bengal’s freedom wrestle was fought as a lot with concepts as with weapons.
It was poet and novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterjee who gave the motion its rallying cry with the tune “Vande Mataram” (Hail to the Motherland), whereas the work of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore infused the resistance with its mental and religious soul.
This deep-seated political consciousness didn’t fade with independence. It was additional institutionalized throughout greater than three a long time of native communist occasion governance, and right this moment, its legacy unfolds on the streets.
This towering statue of Trump is one in every of a number of politically charged installations that depicted the US chief or symbols of his financial agenda because the demon.
Worshipped by hundreds of thousands of Hindus because the mom of the universe, the goddess Durga embodies a highly effective duality: her spear and membership symbolize each fierce prowess and delicate motherliness.
And inside India’s Bengali group, significantly in its cultural epicenter of West Bengal, Durga Puja has advanced past a purely non secular celebration into one of many area’s most deliberate types of public discourse and socio-political commentary.
“This kind of critique and social commentary is something that’s a part of our culture,” mentioned Basak, from the Trump set up’s organizing committee.
“Now that Trump is just imposing tariffs upon tariffs upon tariffs, this is the big issue of the day. So, it’s only apt that we should depict it as such.”