Spiteful Roman Cops Try to Stop Durga Puja
The five-day Durga Puja is one of India’s most popular festivals, and Hindus across the globe, from Moscow and Berlin to cities all across America attend (often lavish) gathering to worship the goddess Durga. However, one city for two years running has done its best to make sure local Hindus can’t have their festival.
“The Municipal Police authorities of Rome have today [Thursday] withdrawn permission, granted three weeks ago, to celebrate Durga Puja in Rome. The cancellation came a few hours before the Ambassador of India was scheduled to inaugurate the Puja at 8 pm local time. No acceptable explanation has been given. This has caused the local Indian community the loss of thousands of Euros spent in preparatory arrangements. The same thing was done in the same manner in 2008 also.”
Arif Shahid Khan, the Indian ambassador to Italy, was able to eventually get permission restored, though their festivities are now 48 hours behind schedule (imagine if Christians were forced to wait until Tuesday to celebrate Easter). While some believe these 11th-hour cancellations are Catholic retribution for the mistreatment of Christians in India (because the best way to make a point about mistreatment is to engage in it), Kanchan Gupta sees a deeper motivation.
“There could be another reason, apart from its “deep concern” about the welfare of Christians in India, for Italy’s callous disregard of the sentiments of Hindus in that country. Although the Italian Constitution guarantees religious freedom, under the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, Italy recognises only the three religions of Semitic origin — Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All other religions are no more than paganism and are to be shamed and shunned. The Vatican would not countenance any open breach of the Lateran Treaty; Italy would not want to be seen as recognising Hinduism. “It’s only natural that Italy should have a surfeit of churches. But it’s the rejection of any other faith than Christianity, Judaism and Islam that explains why there are so many mosques but virtually no temples in Italy although this country has a large Hindu expatriate population,” my friend told me while regretting the attitude of the Government and the local authorities. According to him, there are only three temples in Italy: One in a garage in Venice; another at Frescolo and the third at Reggio Emilia. These survive at the mercy of local zoning officials.”
Catholic-dominated Italy, like Orthodox-controlled Greece, doesn’t tolerate manifestations of faith that fall too far outside the accepted Christian “norm”. In Italy you can still be prosectuted for insulting the Pope, and any whiff of modern Pagan religion gets you counted as a “Satanist” who needs an exorcism (despite all that, there is a thriving Pagan underground in Italy). These actions make Italian authorities look like vengeful thugs rather than prophetic Christians, as Gupta says in the close of his article: “if Christians can celebrate Christmas in New Delhi, Hindus have the right to celebrate Durga Puja in Rome. This is non-negotiable.” Maybe these authorities need to stop worrying so much about the Christians in India, and instead start worrying about the Consitution of Italy that guarantees equal treatment under the law.
3 responses so far
An Indian appropriate counter response would be to stop recognizing Christianity as a religion, do you really want that?
No one is talking about "supporting" "Hindutva". That's a red herring.
I am deeply ashamed of being from Italy, as always and have since distanced myself from this ignorant country full of bigots, country that has lost all its glory but not its will to be a bully and the ridicule of the international community for having a mentality suited to the Dark Ages.
Change is a constant and if there is no change in a structure, it cannot survive;
what we are seeing here is the end of the Christian Church at last, but that will also bring with it the end of Italy, encrusted as it is around the crumbling rock of the Vatican, I fear for its survival but I have since abandoned the sinking ship, I owe no loyalty to it at all.