CALCUTTA, INDIA, June 14, 2006: At Calcutta’s Kalighat temple, a young woman in slit denims and silver danglers, stood the mostly traditionally attired crowd waiting for darshan. She couldn’t care less as long as she catches a glimpse of Ma Kali. She is representative of the many educated and urban young in West Bengal who are showing signs of a religious bent of mind or a penchant for rituals. So is Deep Banerjee, a 31-year-old doctor, who pasted a stick-on swastika sign on the windscreen of his car for “good luck,” like student Rupali Das who wears her green Ganesh T-shirt for luck on exam days while 24-year-old Lipika Bose, a social worker, bows in reverence every time she crosses a temple because she doesn’t want to “incur the displeasure of the Deity,” “Yes, it is quite true that Bengali youth today is no longer afraid to express their religious self,” says Ajoy Kumar Mitra, president of the Kalighat Temple Committee. Swami Ritananda of the Ramakrishna Mission at Golpark in Calcutta points out that the number of young men choosing the life of a hermit is also on the rise.
A snap survey of a small section of the youth conducted by The Telegraph says that eighty-four per cent sought solace in religion while fifty-four per cent said they often visited a place of worship. When Calcutta academic Prasanta Ray was a student of political science in the Sixties, he maintains that they generally were more secular where religion was a source of oppression, a justification for exploitation. However, in recent times, Ray, who has been teaching for 40 years, holds that his students are a lot more religious today than they were earlier.