Chief minister Mamata Banerjee appears to be pitching “Jai Jagannath” against the saffron ecosystem’s “Jai Shri Ram” ahead of next year’s crucial Assembly polls with the much-hyped inauguration of the massive Jagannath Dham in Digha on Wednesday, April 30.

The massive Jagannath Dham, built along the lines of Puri’s 12th-century shrine, has been constructed on 20 acres of land beside the seashore in East Midnapore’s Digha at a cost of around ₹250 crore. Before the inauguration of the temple and the consecration ceremony on Wednesday, Akshay Tritiya, religious rituals began on April 23 under representatives of Puri’s Jagannath temple.

The BJP had taken the Ram Navami celebration in Bengal to a new high after it won 18 Lok Sabha seats out of 42 in 2019. Ram Navami is believed to mark the birth of Ram, being the seventh avatar of Vishnu from the Hindu holy trinity.

Ahead of the Jagannath Dham inauguration, there has been a clear instruction to all district TMC leaders to promote the temple and the scheduled consecration ceremony through social media platforms, while party leaders have been asked to arrange for livestreaming of the April 30 event in each block to showcase the majestic shrine built in Digha and the consecration rituals.

Three air-conditioned hangars, each with a capacity to accommodate 3,000 people, have been set up to allow people to watch the ceremony in person. Select industrialists have been invited in a bid to boost Digha tourism by connecting it to the Jagannath temple.

“The campaigns and promotions for the event can be compared to the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya by Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the general elections last year. Both the administration and the party have been engaged in reaching every corner of the state with the event,” said a senior TMC leader in Calcutta.

Mamata had announced the setting up of the Jagannath temple in Digha in 2018 and had planned to open it for devotees across the country within two years. However, the Covid-19 pandemic delayed construction work. Mamata is likely to reach Digha for a three-day trip on Monday. She will attend the Maha Yajna and Prana Pratishta (consecration) ceremonies, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.

A source in the TMC said that choosing to set up a temple for Jagannath over countless Hindu deities assumes political significance, as the people of Bengal, particularly Hindus, have a long religious connection with Puri’s shrine.

“Any travelling Bengali family must have visited Di-Pu-Da (Digha-Puri-Darjeeling). You can’t find a family that hasn’t paid a visit to Puri and offered Puja at the famous 12th-century temple,” said the source.

“Now Didi has made a club of Digha and Puri by setting up a temple on the seashore,” he added.

Neither Ram nor his foremost devotee and companion-in-chief Hanuman are traditionally revered deities in Bengal, with the vast majority of Bengali Hindus worshipping for millennia various forms of the mother goddess, such as Durga and Kali, or Vishnu’s eighth avatar, Krishna. Jagannath is believed to be a form of Krishna.

The disconnect is one of the main reasons why the Sangh Parivar has found it difficult — certainly not for the want of trying — to make decisive inroads among the Hindus in this eastern state with a pluralist, proudly sub-nationalist ethos.

Trinamool state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said the temple would not only be a place of worship for devotees but would also boost tourism and other industries in the area.

“Lakhs of people will visit the majestic shrine in Digha, resulting in huge employment generation in the area. Local handicrafts and the cashew business will also see a boom following this move,” said Ghosh.

Understanding the TMC’s plan to earn political dividends from the Puri-like Jagannath temple, the BJP’s entire leadership has been busy downplaying it by saying that it was set up as the Jagannath Dham Cultural Centre, not as a temple.

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition, on Sunday wrote to Hari Krishna Dwivedi, the vice-chairman of the West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (WBHIDCO) — the state-run urban planning body that built the Jagannath temple — to clarify whether it is a cultural centre or a temple.

“On the invitation card sent to me, it says Jagannath Dham, and it is not clear if it is a temple or a cultural centre. The government can’t set up a temple or shrine of any religion with money from its exchequer,” said Adhikari, who hails from East Midnapore, an area known as his stronghold since his time in the TMC.

The Nandigram MLA announced that the work of reconstruction and purification of nine Hindu temples in Samserganj, damaged in a recent riot, will begin on April 30.

A senior BJP leader said Mamata’s efforts to woo Hindu voters wouldn’t work as people were disgruntled by her government’s appeasement of minorities.