Durga Puja in Kolkata

The goddess comes home

Durga Puja is the annual worship of the Hindu mother goddess Durga. It is celebrated most famously in Kolkata, in West Bengal, and also across India and among Bengalis abroad. Durga is venerated together with her family — Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha and Kartikeya — in homes and, above all, in pandals, temporary structures built for the festival.

From river clay to river water

In the months before the festival, small artisans’ workshops sculpt images of Durga and her family from unfired clay drawn from the Ganga. The worship begins on the day of Mahalaya, when eyes are painted onto the clay figures to bring the goddess to life. It ends on the tenth day, Vijaya Dashami, when the images are carried in procession and immersed in the river the clay came from. That return has given the festival a second meaning for many Bengalis: a homecoming, a seasonal return to one’s roots.

A city of art

UNESCO describes Durga Puja as the finest example of the public performance of religion and art, and a thriving ground for artists and designers working together. Across Kolkata, neighbourhood committees build pandals as large-scale installations, some of them ambitious works of design. Traditional Bengali dhak drummers play, prayers, recitations, cultural performances and feasts fill the days, and crowds walk the city from pandal to pandal late into the night. During these days, UNESCO notes, the divides of class, religion and ethnicity give way as people move together through the streets to admire the installations.

Durga Puja in Kolkata was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021.