Mizoram Hindus to celebrate 100 years of Durga Puja in the state 

NET News Network 

Aizawl, Oct 18: The Hindu community of this pre-dominant Christian state will start its celebrations of a hundred years' Durga Puja celebration here from Tuesday evening this year. 

The biggest Durga puja celebrations in the state had always been organised by the Hindustan Club, Aizawl and the puja celebrations had always taken place even during the state's disturbed era between 1966 and 1986 continuously. 

According to an article by the state's former Director of Accounts & Treasuries S.S. Dutta in the souvenir prepared by the Club, the first Saradiya Durga Puja was celebrated by three or four civilians in the employ of the 1st Assam Rifles in their complex located at the top of what is now known as Babutlang here. From this small beginning, devotees and followers of the Hindu religion, which were very few at that time, began getting together every year and it was decided in 1906 to form a club where non-Mizos could come together. However, at that time, most of the non-Mizos living in Mizoram were Bengalis as a result of which the first club for Hindu devotees was called the "Bengalee Club".    

The Hindustan Club came into existence only in 1950 after more plains people apart from Bangalis began arriving in the state. 

One of the founding fathers of the Hindustan Club, Lala H.C. Sarda, a businessman who ran a flourishing business here from the early 1940s, said in a message that in the mid 20th century, "There hardly used to be thirty or forty civilians devotees during the Durga Puja at Aizawl. That between two to three thousand devotees participate now-a-days shows how times has changed." 

He is now an old man and living out his days in Silchar. 

The Club's president, P. Chakraborty said they respectfully remember the valuable service rendered by those who first initiated the Durga Puja in the then Aijal in 1904. He said they were proud of the fact that this most important religious ritual of the Hindus had been performed every year since then in spite of hundreds of constraints and difficulties.