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A tale of two Durga Pujas in Singapore: Caste, class, and racism among Bengali migrants


For anyone that has been to a Durga Puja in Singapore, the account I offer here is both familiar and often accepted as normative. 

Durga Puja is a celebration of Bengalis, a five-day festival that celebrates the victory of the Goddess Durga over Mahishashura (the asuras are synonimized with evil) in upper caste Hindu narrative (inverting the narrative of violence carried out by upper caste Hindus over the indigenous peoples, as voiced in Santali narratives of the festival). In Bengal, Durga Puja is celebrated over a period of five days although the preparations for the festivities take place often over two months.

The celebrations of the Durga Puja in Singapore take place in two distinct registers, narrativizing the trajectories through which caste and class in the Bengali context travel through Singapore. 

The puja of the expatriate, upper caste, upper class Hindu Bengalis, mostly from West Bengal (henceforth referred to as expat), and the puja of the working class Bengali migrant workers, both Hindu and Muslim mostly from Bangladesh. Between these two registers, there are two or three more pujas that are synonymous with what usually happens when Bengalis in the diaspora get together to do a puja and end up with internal strifes over power and control of puja-related resources. For this narrative, I will stick to the two Durga Pujas, the expatriate upper caste, upper class Puja and the migrant worker Puja.

The pandal (this is a built up structure that houses the goddess as well as various stalls and exhibits) of the expatriate Puja is marked by its distinct lines of separation. Metal fencing is set up to mark the space inside and the space outside. The expat community, with fashionable puja decor (saris and jewelry ordered specifically to show off wealth during the puja), sits in the inside, while the community of workers largely crowd outside the fencing to line up to see the Goddess. The exorbitant puja subsrciption fees work to mark the separation of the inside and outside, working as a natural gatekeeper to keep out the caste/class/religious outsiders. 

The pandal of the migrant worker Puja is open. There are no bars or propped up fences. On the days of the puja, free puja food (including the Puja bhog) is offered to every visitor to the pandal.  The puja is marked by the large presence of migrant workers organizing the events, inviting community members and visitors to join in.

This tale of two Durga Pujas in Singapore speaks to the organizing of class, caste, and majoritarianism amidst Bengali migration in Singapore. This interplay of caste and majoritarianism is also racist as it plays out through registers of skin colour and appearance.

The two Durga pujas narrate the unequal structures of migration in Singapore: skilled migration that has mostly enabled the movement of educated Indians into largely the information technology and finance sectors, and low-wage labour migration that constitutes the movement of Bangladeshis and Indians into largely unskilled or semi-skilled work without labour rights.

This politics of class in migration plays out in the everyday context of Bengali culture in Singapore. The politics of touch and access that mark the terrains of upper caste, upper class Bengali/Indian society flow into the everyday rituals of the diaspora, importing the casteist and classist ideology of separation into the everyday fabric of cultural life. 

Racist structures of othering work to mark the outside of the expat Bengali community in Singapore, quite literally with propped-up metal fences.

More fundamentally, the two Durga Pujas of Singapore reflect two worlds that are organized under the propaganda of merit, normalizing inequality as an everyday ritual of life. The caste-class interplays of Indian society find a perfect register for continuity in Singapore's meritocratic elitism.

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