‘The Durga Puja ceased to be purely religious in its urban form a very long time ago’: Historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta | Eye News,The Indian Express
The academic who paved the way for the inclusion of Kolkata’s Durga Puja on Unesco’s list of intangible cultural heritage on what makes it such a unique sociological phenomenon
In December 2021, it was this aspect of Kolkata’s Durga Puja that the Unesco recognised while including it in the list: “As a 10-day celebration, Durga Puja represents the collective worship of the Hindu Goddess Durga. During this time, masterfully designed clay models of the Goddess are worshipped in ‘pandals’ or pavilions where communities get together and celebrate. Several folk music, culinary, craft, and performing arts traditions add to the dynamism of this celebration,” says its official press release. In this exclusive interview, Guha-Thakurta reflects on how the festival transformed over the years and how she engages with it as a Kolkatan. Excerpts:
What made you undertake such an exhaustive project?
It was exciting fieldwork. In fact, it was the kind of research work that I enjoyed more than anything I did before. Firstly, it was on contemporary history, it was on my city, on something happening around me. I never thought I would do academic work on the pujos because I never felt that sense of distance. As a Kolkatan, I have grown up enjoying the pujos, and unlike many intellectuals, I was never thrown off by it. But having said that, the pujos of my childhood and of my student years were very different. A lot of my childhood was spent in New Alipore where my grandparents lived. It was a very small parar pujo (neighbourhood puja) and I enjoyed that ambience. Then, through the years of my high school, college and university, it became about touring and getting together. Much, much later, my late colleague Anjun Ghosh and I, decided to do an academic study on the puja as a sociological phenomenon. I also saw it as an artistic phenomenon. New kinds of artists were coming into the field, so the look of the pujo, the creative community, was transforming. This was the early 2000s when we began our work.
How do you look at the blurring of lines between the religious and cultural aspects of Kolkata’s Durga puja?
What drew me to the book is absolutely critical to the kind of identity that the pujo has taken on now. I was clear that I’m not writing a religious history — it would be hard to write a purely religious history anyway about Durga Puja. The Pujo has been about so many other things throughout its history, through the almost 100 years of sarbojanin (community) pujo, and with bonedi barir pujo (pujo at the houses of the elite), we are dealing with a 300 year history. Besides, pujo has always been about competition between, initially, wealthy homes, and then between clubs. It’s about showing off. So, the pujo ceased to be purely religious in its urban form a very long time ago. Instead, it became a grand social celebration, a place for coming together.
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