COLOGNE, GERMANY, October 22, 2004: This year’s Durga Puja festival, celebrated here by the Germany-based Bengali community with much fanfare and devotion, has turned into a veritable show of Hindu-Muslim amity. Many Muslims are taking part and lending a helping hand in the organization of the Oct 19-23 festivities at the Buergerzentrum Chorweiler – the local town hall – of this city on the banks of the river Rhine. The festival has been held under the aegis of the Indischer Kulturverein – or the Bharat Samiti – a Cologne based Indian cultural association dominated by people of Bengali origin, though it also claims other Indians and even Muslims from Bangladesh amongst its members.
Association president D.K. Bannerjee, a businessman, said the festival reflected the “true spirit of reconciliation and brotherhood among people of all faiths.” “We have had Muslim volunteers from Bangladesh helping out in our kitchen and cooking food for five days on a voluntary basis,” he told IANS. Many of the volunteers have taken leave of absence from their work for several days to help in organizing the program. The organizers have set up huge icons of Durga, as well as of Laxmi, Saraswati and Kartika, on an elevated pedestal at the Buergerzentrum Chorweiler.
As part of the festivities, the organizers have arranged for Indian classical music and dance performances, as well as modern Indian dances and music in the evening, besides serving free food to the guests, who usually number between 300 and 400 each evening. Many Germans have also been present at the Durga Puja celebrations. “Our German guests are impressed by the dazzling colors, the food and culture but, more importantly, they are interested in the philosophy of Durga’s fight against injustice and the evils in this world,” Bannerjee explained. Peer Steinbrueck, minister-president of the state of North Rhine Westphalia, in which Cologne lies, is the patron of the Durga festival.
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