If immersion of Durga images is a matter for the courts to decide, there may be life yet in the debate on occasional judicial over-reach.

Yet last Thursday’s directive of Calcutta High Court (coram: Rakesh Tiwari, Acting CJ; and Harish Tandon, J), withdrawing the West Bengal government’s curbs and thus allowing immersion on 1 October (Muharram) ought ideally to ensure the finest moment of secularism in West Bengal, concordant with the certitudes of communal harmony.

It is a noble opportunity for both communities and the government to buttress their secular credentials. Having said that, the state’s DGP does have a point when he avers in the immediate aftermath of the ruling that permission will be granted “only if the situation is fit”. And such “permission will be denied if the situation is unfit”.

Clearly, the government’s stand is based on exgigence; no administration can possibly risk a Muharram tazia to coincide with puja immersion. A not dissimilar stand has now been announced by Bihar’s Nitish Kumar.

The Division Bench has couched its order with the directive that the government “must chalk out designated routes for both events”.

Religious sensitivity is central to the issue and the court is acutely aware that “public order is a matter within the domain of the state legislature and executive and hence it would not be proper to make interference. Yet the same is not an absolute proposition and depends on the facts and circumstances of each case”.

It is a pregnant observation by any reckoning, one that has been reinforced with the caveat that “we make it clear that the state does not have any right to curb or do away with the rituals of any community on a certain date”.

The fineprint of the observation must be that the government need not proceed from conclusion to premise. Mercifully thus far, there is not an “iota of evidence of the possibility of untoward incidents”, the Bench has ruled. Point taken; but in the context of the recent communal mayhem from Malda to Basirhat via Dhulagarh, fears of communal tension on 1 October cannot readily be ruled out.

And most particularly in Taki, where vessels from Bengal and Bangladesh ~ across the river ~ are mobilised to immerse the images in the Ichamati.

Yet with clear demarcation of routes and stringent policing, the state can bear witness to two simultaneous processions ~ immersion and tazia. DGP Surajit Kar Purakayastha has advanced a timely warning that the “police will take stern measures if anybody tries to foment violence”. But he is a mite vague on the point that “outsiders who come to Bengal during the Pujas might foment trouble”. Has the influx escalated in recent months?

Or is it an allusion to the Rohingya exodus? Suffice it to register that if conducted peacefully and with due regard to the rule of law and religions, it will mark the triumph of reason over frenzy.

Let peace prevail on 1 October.