Kolkata’s Bonedi Bari Durga Pujas stick to ‘non-veg’; reject Bageshwar Baba’s ‘veg only’ push

Kolkata ’s B onedi Bari (aristocratic households) Durga Pujas, which have organised the festival for hundreds of years, have decided to stick to their original “non-vegetarian” traditions, rejecting Dhirendra Shastri or self-styled godman Bageshwar Baba’s “vegetarian only” push for Durga Pujas.

With the Durga Pujas just a month away, the debate over veg and non-veg during Bengal’s biggest festival has reached its peak. However, the households that once ushered in Durga Puja in Kolkata do not agree with Bageshwar Baba’s diktat.

“Ours is a 417-year-old Durga Puja; no man or Baba coming from outside will tell us what to do in our puja. Every religion has its own traditions; no one can tell us what we eat and what we wear. It is our fundamental right,” Srimant Roy Chowdhury, the 35 th generation of the Sabarna Roy Chowdhury family Durga Puja in south Kolkata’s Behala told T he Hindu.