Bengal Beckons

How important is Durga Puja to Bengal? Let us begin the answer with a bit of history. Nearly 280 years ago, Bhaskar Ram Kolhatkar or Bhaskar Pandit, the dreaded chief of the Bargi (Maratha) invaders, began a Durga Puja in Katwa in Bardhaman district, about 140 km from Kolkata, where the Bargis had set up a strong encampment. Here was a man whose stated intention was to plunder and loot Bengal, and yet he was actually organising a quintessentially Bengali festival in what had become ‘his’ area.

That is how important Durga Puja always has been in Bengal, since time immemorial. Incidentally, ‘Bhaskar Panditer Pujo’ continues to be performed in Katwa today, in front of the ruins of the temple in which the Bargi commander had begun his puja.

No surprises then, that on December 15, 2021, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) accorded ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) status to Durga Puja festivities in West Bengal’s capital city Kolkata. As the ICH website’s homepage puts it, “Durga Puja is seen as the best instance of the public performance of religion and art, and as a thriving ground for collaborative artists and designers. The festival is characterized by large-scale installations and pavilions in urban areas, as well as by traditional Bengali drumming and veneration of the goddess. During the event, the divides of class, religion and ethnicities collapse as crowds of spectators walk around to admire the installations.”

On a social, cultural, and artistic level, Durga Puja is perhaps unlike any other religious festival in India. The underlying idea is to celebrate the homecoming of the goddess Durga as she makes her annual visit to her parents’ home with her four children Saraswati, Lakshmi, Ganesh, and Kartik, but in practice, it is the biggest socio-cultural festival of Bengal, cutting across all barriers. It is indeed a cultural heritage that has only grown stronger with every passing year.

According to most scholars, Durga Puja in Bengal dates back to the medieval era (at least 11th century AD), though Bengal broke with tradition by performing the ritual in Autumn, whereas it was originally meant for Spring. Apparently, the unseasonable ritual was begun by Lord Rama, hero of the Ramayana, when he performed the puja in Autumn as part of his war against the demon king Ravana. Initially the preserve of rich aristocratic families, Durga Puja in its present form probably began in Bengal in the 16th century, when renowned zamindar Raja Kangsanarayan organised a lavish festival at a cost of nearly Rs 8 lakh at Taherpur in Nadia district towards the end of the century.

Other landed aristocrats followed in his footsteps. In 1606, a Puja was organised by Bhabananda Majumdar of Nadia, an ancestor of the celebrated Raja Krishnachandra Roy. Kolkata probably got its first Durga Puja in 1610, courtesy Laxmikanta Majumdar, the founder of the Sabarna Roy Chowdhury family. This family is inextricably linked to the founding of Kolkata, since it was from them that the British East India Company acquired the rights to three villages – Sutanuti, Gobindapur, and Kalikata – which went on to become the city of Calcutta, later Kolkata.

In 1790, Guptipara in Hooghly district saw the first barowari (community) Durga Puja as opposed to a private residential puja. The community puja arrived in Kolkata in the early 20th century, and in the 1920s and 30s, became a highly visible platform for demonstrations of nationalism and patriotism, led by such iconic freedom fighters as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Gradually, Kolkata as the state capital began to overtake the districts as far as grandeur and lavishness goes.

Today, Durga Puja in Kolkata involves spectacular displays of creative fervour, thanks to the rise of ‘theme pujas’, where everything from the temporary pandal housing the goddess to the idols themselves adhere to a specific theme. Celebrated art designers, lighting experts and sculptors are often roped in to create the pandals, illuminations, and idols, with several organisations handing out awards for all aspects of the festival, from idol to environment-friendliness. For five days beginning with Sasthi and ending with Dashami, Kolkata comes to a standstill as millions of people throng the pandals in their colourful festive finery. The streets are crowded at all hours, and the city takes on the air of a joyful carnival, thanks to the hypnotic rhythms of the ‘dhaak’, a traditional Bengali drum.

To someone who has not witnessed Durga Puja in Kolkata, the sheer frenzy is hard to put into words. We invite you to come and see for yourself!

Walking around some of the city’s oldest Pujas

Durga Puja outside Kolkata is far older than Durga Puja in Kolkata, simply because the city we now know as Kolkata did not even exist until the last decade of the 1600s. Before that, the area was a collection of villages of which three – Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kolikata – laid the foundation for the British city of ‘Calcutta’. Gradually, more villages came to be included within its radius, but if we talk of the beginnings of Calcutta, we have to go back to those first three villages.

Which brings us to some of the oldest recorded Durga Pujas of Kolkata, all of which are open to the public:

THE SABARNA ROY CHOUDHURY DURGA PUJA: The Puja was initiated in 1610 by Lakshmikanta Ray, brother to the legendary king Pratapaditya Ray who was defeated by the Mughal general Man Singh. Since the general was a disciple of Lakshmikanta’s father, he gifted large amounts of land (parganas) as ‘guru dakshina’ to Lakshmikanta, and also made him a jaigirdar (landholder) in 1608.

The family bore the last name Ray Mazumdar before they were awarded the honorific ‘Choudhury’ and since their ‘gotro’ (clan lineage) was Sabarna, the Puja instituted by Lakshmikanta became known as the ‘Barisha Sabarna Roy Choudhury Durgotsav’. It was from the Sabarna Roy Choudhurys that the British leased Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kolikata in the closing stages of the 1600s.

Settled in the Barisha area of Behala in southwest Kolkata, the family still celebrates Puja in all its pomp and splendour according to traditional Bengali customs, harking back to a time when the region’s wealthy landlords saw Durga Puja as an opportunity to establish their wealth and prestige.

SOVABAZAR RAJBARI DURGA PUJA: This is more of a joint Puja, performed in both the houses belonging to the Deb family, standing adjacent to each other. The smaller of the two is ‘Baghbari’, owned by Gopimohan Deb and constructed after the original residence was made by Raja Nabakrishna Deb, a renowned supporter of Hinduism during the Brahmo Samaj reformist movement of Raja Rammohan Roy. Nabakrishna was also a British sympathiser, and began his Puja the year after the British victory in the Battle of Plassey (1757).

Sovabazar Rajbari commences its Durga Puja festivities on the day of Rath Yatra (end June or early July), when the wooden framework of the idol is worshipped. The idol is crafted in-house, and Bodhan (the ritual infusing of life into the goddess) starts 15 days before Nabami. For the Deb family, Durga is simply the daughter of their household idol, Gopinath Jiu, whereas according to mythology, she is the daughter of Himalaya, king of the mountains.

The ‘ek chala’ (all five figures fused into one entity against a single backdrop) style is embellished with ornaments made of silver foil known as ‘daker saaj’. The idols of Durga and her four children are also adorned with gold ornaments.

An important ritual performed by the family is the release of two nilkantha (bluejay) birds prior to and during the immersion of the idol. The first bird, released before immersion, is supposed to fly to Mt Kailasa to convey the message of Durga’s departure to her husband, Lord Shiva. The second bird is a backup in case the first one fails.

HATKHOLA DUTTA BARI DURGA PUJA: This Puja was started in 1716 by Ramcharan Dutta (born 1630), who gave up his property in Gobindapur village to the British East India Company for construction of the first Fort William in 1696, in exchange for a vast tract of land at Chitpore, which was part of Sutanuti. Ramcharan later settled in the neighbourhood of Hatkhola in Sovabazar, and his descendants came to be known as the Duttas of Hatkhola.

‘Bodhon’, which is usually performed on Saptami (the second day of Durga Puja), lasts for 15 days at this home, as it does in Sovabazar Rajbari. In the month of Aashar (June-July), on the ninth day of the new moon, the framework of the idol is worshipped, and the making begins. During the actual Puja, vegetable and fruit sacrifices are performed as part of the rituals instead of animal sacrifices, and once again like Sovabazar Rajbari, the Hatkhola Dutta Bari also performs the ‘Nilkantha’ ritual, only the second bird is set free once the immersion is over.

CHHATU BABU LATU BABU DURGA PUJA: This Puja goes back to at least 1770, when it was started by Ramdulal Dey (Sarkar), the legendary father of the equally legendary Chhatu Babu (Ashutosh Deb) and Latu Babu (Pramathanath Deb). Ramdulal changed the family name of Dey to Deb to give it more social prestige, while Sarkar (in the sense of business agent) was a sobriquet earned through his various shipping and trading activities.

Though some dispute the exact year when Ramdulal (1752-1825) started Durga Puja at his residence on Beadon Street is not known, he was a multi-millionaire by the 1780s, so one can assume the beginnings lay in the years prior. After his death, his two sons enthusiastically carried the family Puja forward and amplified it several times over, thanks to their generally extravagant spending habits for which they were famous.

Durga Puja is currently held in the huge covered ‘thakur dalan’ (courtyard) of Ramdulal Nibas, the palatial and well-preserved family home. The ‘ek chala’ idol is placed on a raised platform, and Lakshni and Saraswati, Durga’s two daughters, are worshipped as Jaya and Bijaya. The 10-day Puja begins right after Mahalaya (new moon) and continues until Sasthi (sixth day), on a ‘ghot’ (metal or clay urn) without the idol. On Saptami (seventh day), idol worship begins. The wooden framework of the idols is worshipped on Rath Yatra.

PATHURIAGHATA GHOSH FAMILY DURGA PUJA: This Puja, among the oldest in Kolkata, was probably first started by Ramlochan Ghosh, clerk (banian) to Governor-General Warren Hastings. But it was his grandson Khelat Chandra Ghosh (1829-78) who moved out of the family home on 46 Pathuriaghata Street to a new house next door at number 47, and amped up the scale of the family Puja in 1846 in his stunning, newly built Pathuriaghata Palace.

Located in the Jorabagan area, Pathuriaghata is among the oldest neighbourhoods of what used to be Sutanuti, and became home to some of Kolkata’s wealthiest families in the 18th century when they were granted land in the area in lieu of their holdings in Gobindapur, which they ceded to the British for the construction of the new Fort William after 1757.

The most striking aspect of the Ghosh family Durga Puja is its use of silver. From the ‘ek chala’ idols themselves to the backdrop to the throne on which the idols are placed, everything is wrapped in silver foil. Even the rituals are performed using silver utensils. This puja was once attended by the who’s who of Calcutta, but the most notable attendee would have been the mystic saint

Ramakrishna Paramhansa, who was venerated by Khelat Ghosh himself.

NB: Since most traditional homes are located in north Kolkata, it is obvious that the oldest Pujas are to be found there. However, there are several Pujas which go back at least a century scattered all over the city, though most of them are ‘sarbojanin’ (public) Pujas.