Happy Bijoya Dashami

The observance of Bijoy Dashami, happening as it does in a spirit of joy, is in a very large sense a reassertion of faith by those who hold fast to the tenets of the Hindu religion. And religion is but another term for the many ways in which men and women identify with the Creator, indeed with the divinities they hold faith by. This morning, and all day today, Bangladesh's Hindu community as also Hindus elsewhere around the world will call forth within themselves the verve and the reflective spirit so necessary in a renewal of belief in the wonders of life.
And yet there is much more than a mere celebration of life that comes with Bijoya Dashami, indeed with the entirety of the puja season. For the truth holds that on this tenth day of the puja observances, it is a triumph of the human spirit over the forces of evil which manifests itself for the world's Hindus. From a bigger perspective, it is a time when the human condition, constantly under assault from sinister elements, rouses itself in all its enormity of self-assertion and delivers that final, decisive blow which sends darkness scattering before an onrush of light. In simple terms, the essence of Durga Puja, apart from a symbolic worship of Mother Durga, subsists in the ability of man to emerge victorious over all those elements ceaselessly engaged in war against all that is good and noble. Victory thus is sweet, to be relished in true remembrance of the majesty of divinity. It is victory which, once it solidifies itself, translates into the theme of the universal brotherhood of people everywhere.
And thus it is that today, through the immersion of the goddess in the water, again a reflection of the purity defining the links between the divine and the mortal, the worldly and the spiritual come together. Happiness is all.
Our felicitations go out to the members of Bangladesh's Hindu community. In the non-communal ambience of our society, we partake with them of the good cheer they bring into the Bijoya Dashami celebrations today.