How Durga Puja has many histories, from ‘colonial link’ to Independence struggle

Kolkata’s Durga Pujo has been given an Intangible Cultural Heritage tag by Unesco. In this episode, we take you through the origins of the festival in households and the larger community. When was the first Durga Puja held in Kolkata? And where? Let’s take you back a few hundred years, to the first time the Goddess is known to have been worshipped. This was in an elite Bengali household, known as a bonedi bari. “Our 22nd descendent, Lokkhikanto Gangopadhyay, got rent-free jaigir as gurudakshina from Mansingha in the year 1608,” says Devarshi Roy Choudhury, who belongs to the 35th generation of the Saborno Roy Choudhury family in Barisha. “Lokkhikanto and his wife, Bhogoboti Debi, decided to start a Durga Puja at Barisha, which was one of the biggest janapadas of the time. So, that Durga Puja was the first in the land of Kolkata and the first Shoporibara Durga Puja. That means in the same Chaalchitra, Durga was being worshipped with her four children, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartik and Ganesh. So, the form which we see today, it started from our Shaborno family in the year 1610.” Saborno is the family gotra and Roy Choudhury is the imperial title given by Mughal emperor Jahangir in 1608, along with the rent-free jagir or land grant that stretched from Halishohor to Diamond Harbour, a more than 100-kilometre tract from present-day North 24 Parganas to South 24 Parganas districts in West Bengal.The Roy Choudhury family claims to have transferred their rights of the three villages of Gobindopur, Sutanuti and Kolikata to the British East India Company in 1698. These three villages together formed the city of Kolkata as we know it today. So, the first Durga Puja is even older than the city itself…. Durga Puja & British victoryThe Sovabajar Rajbari, another prominent bonedi bari from North Kolkata, stakes claim to hosting the first ever Durga Puja as well, a Durga Puja that was attended by the likes of Lord Robert Clive and Warren Hastings from the East India Company. The Rajbari’s founder, Raja Nabakrishna Deb, had been employed by the company as a munshi, an interpreter, to overcome the language barrier that was affecting business. In due course of time, he was even given the zamindari of the area and, around 1755, bestowed with the Maharaja title.Tapas Bose, family member and trustee of the Shovabajar Rajbari, says that their first Durga Puja was also a celebration of British victory in the Battle of Plassey. Sovabazar Rajbari is famed to be one of the oldest Durga Pujas documented in history, started by Raja Nabakrishna Deb in 1757 after the British won the Battle of Plassey. Image credit: Amit Moulic“The year 1757 is an important turning point in Indian history,” Bose points out. “In that year, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, was defeated by the British East India Company in the Battle of Plassey. This marked the beginning of the British Raj in India. Our Durga Puja began in 1757. This is its 266th year. “When Lord Clive and Warren Hastings crushed the Nawab’s forces, our ancestor Raja Nabakrishna Deb was one of the several natives who had supported them,” Bose says. “Soon after the Battle of Plassey victory, the British needed a place to celebrate. That’s when Raja Nabakrishna Deb offered them a solution. His new palace was complete and he was organising a Durga Puja there. So, he invited them to come and celebrate at the palace halls.” Other prominent Rajbaris also garnered fame for their household Durga Pujas over the years. Rani Rashmoni, who had commissioned the Dakshineshwar Kali Temple and was a patron for mystic saint Ramakrishna Paramhansa, held a family Durga Puja at her home in Janbazar, in central Kolkata, since 1790. Then there is the Chatu Babu Latu Babu family’s Durga Puja that began in 1770 at a grand building on Beadon Street in North Kolkata. Several other bonedi baris across Kolkata and its surrounding areas secured a sacred space for themselves by hosting traditional Durga Pujas in their respective houses.Unique Durga Puja traditionsThe bonedi bari pujas have held on to rituals unique to their respective households. The Saborno Roy Choudhury family and the Sovabazar Rajbari have a few common traditions. Both their Durga Pujas begin on Krishna Nabami, 14 days prior to Durga Nabami. Both have a horse-faced lion on which Ma Durga rides, which is a distinctively Vaishnav tradition, even though she is an incarnation of Shakti.Animal sacrifice, a previous staple at the Rajbari pujas, has long been discontinued, with vegetables being symbolically sacrificed instead. But Sovabazar Rajbari still offers a pair of catfish as sacrifice. This is the 413th year of the Saborno Roy Choudhury family puja. Devarshi Roy Choudhury explains how they have been worshipping the Goddess over the years: “In 1660, Bidyadhor Roy Choudhury started the tridhara sangam in our family, that means Shakto, Shoibo and Boishnob traditions together,” he explains. “According to that, our three houses, boro bari, mejo bari and nimta pathanpur bari, the lion is not an Asian lion but it is a horse-faced lion, which is a Vaishnav tradition. Now Kumari Puja is being held at boro bari and Birati bari on the day of Nabami, which is also a Vaishnav tradition. However, the Puja is being done in a tantric form, which is called Durga Bhokti Torongini.” The first Durga Puja dates back to the 1600s, with the first ritualised celebration being done by the Saborno Roy Choudhury family in their ancestral home. This is the 413th year. Image credit: Debbobrata ShomeDevarshi adds that it was his forefathers’ foresight that created many separate pujas for the household, so that its growing extended kin could take an active part in learning and practicing the core rites and rituals. Right now, the Saborno family Durga Puja means eight Durga Pujas. Six are being organised at Barisha --- the aatchala bari, boro bari, mejo bari, majher bari, kalikinkor bhobon, and benaki bari. The seventh one is at Nimta, Birati and the eighth, at Nimta Pathanpur bari. “This is the only family in the whole world which has so many Durga Pujas in a single family,” proclaims Devarshi, adding that they have a special puja called Maashobhoktoboli where they give offerings and puja to the Apodevatas and Upodevatas, minor deities and even evil spirits, in the belief that they have also helped in the puja.Curiously, none of the Sovabazar Rajbari family members are allowed to touch the Durga idol or anything related to the rituals for the entire duration of the pujas as they are not Brahmins. Family member Tapas Bose explains: “Our family is non-Brahmin. We are Kayasthas. So, everything related to the pujas, including the arrangements for rituals, fruits and other offerings are taken care of by our servants, who are all Brahmins. Most of them are from Orissa. The precondition for hiring servants who will be engaged in Durga puja work is that they have to be Brahmins. These servants have been with us through four to five generations.”Also, the Sovabajar Rajbari doesn’t offer the Goddess any cooked food as bhog. This follows from the ancient practice of Brahmins not being offered cooked food by any non-Brahmin. They were always given the raw material --- the rice, dal, salt, oil, fruits and vegetables --- which they then cooked for themselves. So, it is assumed that Ma Durga will cook all the raw food offered and feed herself and her children. How Durga Puja helped Independence struggleThe way the Goddess was being worshiped played a crucial role in every twist and turn of India’s chequered history. Moumita Sen, associate professor of culture studies at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society, insists it began as a show of pomp and glory. “What has been fascinating for me is the way royal, aristocratic and basically the top-tier elite families used Durga Puja as a way to show their status and power to the well-placed people in the colonial government ranks,” Sen says. “These people, at the time, were called the gentoos, or the gentleman Hindus, by the Brits.”But the Goddess came out of the Rajbari confines soon enough, and began to be worshipped by one and all in marquees built on the streets. The first ever community puja outside of a bonedi bari was said to be held in 1790 at Guptipara, in the Hooghly district of Bengal. According to popular lore, 12 Brahmin friends had decided to band together to organise a Durga Puja, which gained much traction in the surrounding neighbourhoods and led to the coining of the term ‘barowari’, which literally meant ‘by 12 friends’. Some, however, contest this and say it was a Jagaddhatri Puja and not a Durga Puj. But what is uncontested is that Ma Durga no longer remained an elitist prerogative; she became the common man’s deity as well. In 1910, as the Swadeshi movement gained momentum, 12 freedom fighters got together to host a Durga Puja by the banks of the Adi Ganga at Balaram Basu Ghat.The transition from barowari to sharbojanin, which means for one and all, was a quick one for the Goddess. She became a symbol for a nation’s thirst for freedom as the Simla Byayam Samity in 1926 introduced the first Sharbojonin Durgotsav on a plot of land yards away from Swami Vivekananda’s ancestral home in north Kolkata. The Samity was a fitness club founded by Atindra Nath Bose to mobilise Bengal’s young guns to participate in the Indian nationalist movement. Bose was a member of secret revolutionary society Anushilan Samiti, and wanted to channel the energies of the youth through the worship of the Goddess to secure Independence for the Motherland. The nationalist spirit steered the ritual workings of the Simla Byayam Samiti Durga Puja. Pinaki Dutta, public relations officer of the puja committee, recalls, “When Mahatma Gandhi had called for the Non-Cooperation Movement, asking the entire nation to boycott foreign cloth, our Ma Durga idol was draped in khadi attire. During that time, our Durga protima came to be known far and wide as the swadeshi thakur. The Samity even organised puppet shows to invoke anti-British sentiments among the common people. All of this led the British to declare the Simla Byayam Samity as illegal and confiscate all its sports equipment.”The very plot on which the Simla Byayam Samity Durgotsav happens was secured for the Samity by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose when he was the mayor of Kolkata. Neighbouring Baghbazar Sarbojanin Durgotsav also claims Netaji’s patronage. Netaji was the puja committee’s president in 1938-39, and is said to have taken a plot of land from the municipality’s metal yard during his term as mayor to arrange for an exhibition space for the puja. Gautam Neogi, general secretary of Baghbazar’s Durgotsav and Exhibition committee, elaborates: “In 1930, when Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose brought the Durga Puja to the present-day grounds, he also started a Swadeshi Mela as part of the puja exhibition to promote indigenous handicraft. Two years later, in 1932, he began the Birashtami Utsav, which is celebrated till date. Through this Utsav, he skilled local youths in stick-fighting, wielding the knife, wrestling, boxing and other self-defence practices to inculcate a revolutionary spirit in them and prepare them for the imminent freedom struggle.” Independent India saw community pujas across the length and breadth of West Bengal. A few decades on, the “theme puja” phenomenon captured public imagination in Kolkata and its surrounds and has been here to stay ever since. Also see: How Tamil Nadu’s Golu Dolls Returned To Their RootsAlso see: Durga Puja Themes: Lord’s To Vatican, Van Gogh To Satyajit RayAnchor: Anindya ChakravortyAudio production: Sahil Gupta