Digha, India – On a hot and sultry June afternoon, Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of India’s West Bengal state, swept a sun-scorched road to make way for a towering chariot in Digha, a tourist town on the country’s Bay of Bengal coast.

The moment, captured by dozens of cameras and broadcast widely on television, on June 27, marked the launch of the eastern state’s first-ever government-sponsored Rath Yatra (“chariot festival”) to celebrate the construction of a sprawling temple complex built to house the Hindu god, Lord Jagannath.

First announced in December 2018, and completed in May this year, the Digha temple has been pitched by Banerjee and her governing Trinamool Congress (TMC) party as West Bengal’s alternative to the more popular Jagannath Temple in neighbouring Odisha state

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