{"id":10549,"date":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/10\/14\/bengali-ministers-help-organize-durga-pujas\/"},"modified":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-14T12:00:00","slug":"bengali-ministers-help-organize-durga-pujas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2011\/10\/14\/bengali-ministers-help-organize-durga-pujas\/","title":{"rendered":"Bengali Ministers Help Organize Durga Pujas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/First-in-decades-Bengal-ministers-plunge-into-pujas\/Article1-752243.aspx\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>KOLKATA, INDIA, October 1, 2011 (Hindustan Times): For the first time in 35 years, West Bengal&#8217;s ministers have openly joined in organizing Durga Puja celebrations, unlike the previous leftist government whose members included avowed atheists. Though some fear this might lead to a misuse of the pujas or weaken secularism, the leaders say their involvement spreads a message of religious harmony.<\/p>\n<p>Sports Minister Madan Mitra, who organizes the Agradut and Uday Sangha Puja at Bhowanipore, said the festival was more of a social and cultural event than a religious one.<\/p>\n<p>Public health engineering minister Subrata Mukherjee, the guiding force of South Kolkata&#8217;s Ekdalia Evergreen Puja, said, &#8220;I have been attached with this puja since my childhood and being a minister does not make any difference. When it comes to the committee I am just an ordinary member.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source KOLKATA, INDIA, October 1, 2011 (Hindustan Times): For the first time in 35 years, West Bengal&#8217;s ministers have openly,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}