Kolkata’s Durga Pujas Are Keeping Urban Folk Culture Alive
Jawhar Sircar
(Published in The Wire on 27.09.2017)
Do you want to walk through Bahubali’s
overawing Mahishmati palace in north Kolkata, that is over five stories high?
It has been done so wonderfully at over ten crore rupees that the super-hits
film’s creator SS Chandramouli is truly bowled over. Or are you keen to shake
hands with Mowgli and his Jungle Book friends Babloo, Baghera and others in an
honest to goodness ‘forest’ within the metropolis of Kolkata, where one can see
that hissing snake Kaa and the killer Sher Khan from a safe distance? Or,
maybe, enter Ajanta Caves or even pose before the Eiffel Tower and Buckingham
Palace? This is neither a con game nor a walk through some film studio with
these look-alike props: they are as real as possible. Lakhs of humans have
literally started crowding dozens of such sites all over the city, admiring and
touching the life size statues that adorn Bahubali’s prized palace. Oh, we
forgot to mention that it also houses Kolkata’s Sreebhumi Sporting Club’s Durga
image, ready for worship. The Machua Bazaar Durga Puja Commitee is similarly
busy with their Jungle Book forest, where thousands of kids have started
pouring in for fun and of course to see the Durga Puja there. As is evident,
Kolkata has gone crazy again, which it does each year during Bengal's Durga
Puja season that celebrates the last four days of Navaratri. The entire
mega-city of Kolkata metamorphoses into something that is a cross between an
indigenous ‘Disneyland’ and a spirited Latin American fiesta, as billions of
tiny multi-coloured lights transform a struggling city into a dreamland.
It is great fun for those who pine to
walk for several hours of puja-hopping, in very high spirits, and actually be a
part of one of the largest congregations of humanity. They do not mind the
occasional pushing and shoving, as goggle-eyed visitors break into raptures at
each ‘pandal’. This is what the temporary architecture of cloth, plywood
and improvised materials that stand on wooden poles and bamboo rods are called.
They are far removed from the humble and unimaginative shamianas that
the rest of India puts up during their celebrations or big events. One may, of
course, traverse short distances by cars, buses, trams or metro rail service,
but then one has still to walk a bit to get close enough to savour the
magnificence and innovations of each pandal and the ambience of the
surroundings. For those who are short on the fitness quotient or are not fully
equipped with the crazy bug that converts itself into a special enthusiasm that
is essential for the millions who trudge from venue to venue, the television is
the best option. One can see it all, in the cool comfort of one’s own home,
though frankly it is not like being in Eden Gardens or at Lords, because one
does get a bit of a second hand view of what is nothing short of the most
spontaneous explosion of popular art that grips this huge metropolis.
‘Art installations’ on such a scale by
so many untrained artists are difficult to match anywhere else in this country
or abroad. The Bengalis, who are not usually rated as the most energetic of
people, seem to draw large doses of vigour from some hidden reservoir of zeal,
to give shape to their fertile and unbound creativity. In the bargain, we get to
see a mind-boggling array of ‘theme’ pandals and uniquely-crafted images that
are created from every conceivable material. Thus while a handful of
obscurantists and the progressively increasing number of Hindutva-vadis lump it, one group creates the goddess with
coconut shells, the other from matchsticks, the third from broken glass bangles
and yet another from betel nuts: each of them in perfect shape and proportion.
Good old gangetic clay remains the favourite of the highly skilled idol makers
of Kamartali, almost everything else is also tried out: papier mache,
bamboo splints, nuts, seeds, beads, fabrics of all types, jute, flax, hemp,
hay, paper, cardboard, wood, plastics, glass, ceramics, fibre-glass, shells,
beads, razor blades, screws nuts, bolts — in fact, any substance that can be
given shape to and can wow the viewers with its novelty or chutzpah of
imagination. Many an outrageous modern artist would appear to be just dull in
comparison and it is another matter altogether that these indigenous creators
do not rank as creative artists outside Kolkata. Experimentation is not
confined to styles, poses, gestures. Even the dress of the idols range from the
usual silk or cotton to velvet, crepes of different fabrics, jute, paper,
matchsticks, broken glass — in fact, any substance that could give the
impression of novelty. Gone are the days when idols wore only the uniform
traditional dress caulled daker-saaj that consists of pith, with
bits of gold and silver foils and sequins glistening on them. It is free for
all in each sector, whether it be the images, dresses, pandals, lighting, theme
parks or sounds — it spreads to every area where there is opportunity for any
outburst of originality.
The mammoth
crowds as well as art lovers are given a treat each year as imagination and
innovation are let loose with a sense of marketing and competition. If only a
part of this zeal was put in to attract industries the state could have done
wonders, but the creative Bengali visualiser would loathe the very thought of fattening
the purses of capitalists that he is genetically programmed to hate. The
imagery of the goddess attacking the demon that the scriptures enjoin is also
subjected radical experimentation and thus Durga and her family could very well
appear in stylishly tattered jeans while the demon just rocks on. From film
stars to national heroes, from the politician to the ugly profiteer — the folk
artists and clay-modellers have used all possible ‘models’, as Durga, Mahishasura,
Kartik, Saraswati, et al. Even the iconographic and religious
mandate that this goddess must have ten arms as she is the dasha-bhuja, and
that each of these arms must bear its assigned weapon or instrument has been
subjected to the artisan’s imagination or caprice — which would amount to ‘sacrilege’
elsewhere. In Kolkata, however, such acts have only drawn larger crowds and, in
most cases, the desired admiration. So much so, that it is not an uncommon
practice to arrange for a small regular image placed before the larger artistic
creation which is the one to whom all prayers are to be directed and devotion
showered upon, while the much-larger ‘art idols’ are only for public display.
The adroit flexibility of scriptures joins hands with downright ingenuity, so
that the catholicity of Kolkata’s citizens can be fully utilised for the most
imaginative or outrageous expressions of artistic fancy.
Almost all
the three thousand pujas are jealously different from each other and if one
tries to see only the short list of eighty puja-pandals that the Kolkata Police
has, with time and experience, marked as the top of the grade, one would need
much more than the allotted four days. These are the days of Shasti, Sapatami,
Ashtami and Navami of Navaratri, and the pujas officially end on Dusshera
or Vijaya Dashami, when the shastras enjoin that the images must
all be consigned to the holy Ganga, without any thought of what it does to the
mother river’s health. But thanks to organisers who try every trick to hold
back Durga for as many days as possible now getting mixed up with vote bank
politicians, overburdened policemen and the courts, the pujas are unofficially
extended beyond Dashami. The images are taken for immersion from the
mega puja in easy instalments, for almost a week after the religiously sanctioned
date, so that more and more people get to behold their magnificence, splendour
or innovation, for which the organisers and artists spent at least six to nine
months to prepare. Apart from Bahubali and Jungle Book, this year’s pujas have
also conjured a mammoth White Thai Temple as well as several walks through
serious themes like urbanisation, environmental hazards, cycle of life, time in
human life and so on. Record crowds visit these ‘theme pandals’ as their
presentations are farthest from the pedantic: they are just stunning in the use
of visual imagery, digital projection, holograms, lights, sounds, materials
used and the lot. And, all of this is done in the name of Ma Durga who presides
over all her crazy children. A theme pandal that focuses on global warning has
a simulated tornado that whooshes around so eerily and the setting has 8000
kilograms of glass crafted by the artisans who are camping there all the way
from the ‘glass town’ of Firozabad in UP. The water display alone has some 2400
kilograms of glass. One can appreciate the stimulus to the economy that it
gives and its model of job-oriented growth could easily be studied by PM’s new
advisory council led by Bibek Debroy. Needless to mention, big and small lights
play a unique role in enhancing themes, with wondrous animation that tell so
many tales: from demonetisation to lesser demons.
But, when did Kolkata begin this prolonged and
emotional engagement with Durga that brings out so much creativity, completion
and spirit? To be historically precise, the first community Durga puja of
consequence was held in the autumn of 1910, at Balaram Basu Ghat Road in
Baghbazar area of north Kolkata, which was in the heart of the old,
aristocratic part of the city. It coincided with the 1910 session of the Indian
National Congress in Kolkata, which explains how nationalist sentiment and
fervour played such a critical role in getting common people together. Tilak’s
model of using Ganapati for galvanising masses in service of the nation was the
role model for Kolkata's community pujas but Bengalis have bouts of amnesia
when it comes to giving credit to others. The township of Kolkata was set up by
the East India Company some 220 years earlier, in 1690 and before it completed
its first century it was declared to be the chief seat of British governance.
After vanquishing the ruling powers of India in battles of Plassey and Buxar,
by means fair or foul, the Company acquired
revenue rights and to rule it all, the Governor of Bengal was declared
as the Governor General of India. The wily collaborators of the British in
Kolkata like Raja Nabakrishna Deb and Raja Krishna Chandra were the first to
celebrate the goddess of victory, Durga, in their palatial homes in 1758,
immediately after the Battle of Plassey. To ‘enhance’ their social status, they
invited the firangis over to their house for evenings of splendour
during the Durga pujas, where dancing girls performed ostensibly before the
goddess and wine flowed freely. The logic was that the devi was not averse to
liquor as she herself took a few swigs before battling so many demons. There
are, of course, a few precedents before these post-Plassey pujas, as we find
that almost a century and a half earlier, Raja Kansa Narayan of Taherpur in
eastern Bengal and some other Hindu chieftains had also organised grand
celebrations during Durga pujas. They were thanking the goddess for their providential break when the
Mughals employed Hindus zemindars and finally ended the four centuries
of Muslim monopoly in the revenue administration Bengal. But we have no
historical records of continued observance since then as celebrations required
a lot of money that only largely-profitable zemindaris could afford.
Some of the first lot of Hindu land-holders could not continue large-scale
worship later because of fickle fortune.
After Plassey, however, we have an
unbroken history of ostentatious Durga puja celebrations at the palaces
of the Company’s nouveau riche Indian intermediaries, the munshis and banians.
The practice of the laat (lord) sahibs gracing these events where nautch
girls entertained the white man continued for the next one hundred and fifty
years. The rich and the famous of the growing metropolis vied with each other
to entertain the British, while Durga appeared to look away from crass and
vulgar displays of wealth and ‘tastes’. Durga pujas soon became very expensive
and exclusive pageants that the prosperous Bengali babu held at his
residence to which the masses had only limited access to their goddess. In all
fairness, a new culture of poetry, song, dance and theatre also flourished
thanks to this patronage, as did the visual and plastic arts. ‘Commoners’ also
tried to pool their resources together to worship Durga pujas in their own
style and we have a record of one such attempt at Guptipara in Hooghly in the
1790s. But, realistically, one would have to wait for English education to
spread and spawn new secular professions for the new bourgeois class to start
gathering economic and social strength to carve an alternate lifestyle. This
class bloomed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when they also
started displaying the first signs of nationalism as well.
During the heydays of zamindars too,
the masses discovered their own avenues of entertainment that involved creative
expression, especially during the festive season. They enjoyed
their own extempore poetic contests kabi-gans and tarjaas that
called for sharp wit and repartee and they had their ‘panchali’ songs,
in praise of divinities, performed with a bit of pantomime. They organised fascinating open air
theatrical performances called ‘jatras’, with colourful costumes and an
indigenous concert with violins that matched the melodramatic moments with high
notes. Climaxes were greeted by the beats of drums and the clang of huge
cymbals. Most interesting were the subaltern mock songs and dances the ‘jhumur’ and ‘khemta’ and
the salty and salacious lampoons of the high and mighty through ‘shong’ performances, where they
ripped apart the inequitable social order, with sheer rancid wit. These
assertions of Kolkata’s urban folk culture, also required patronage — for
though the merry claps of the downtrodden could gladden the performer’s heart,
he needed something more substantial to fill his pocket and his stomach. The
richer babus stepped in, with support for the tarja and the jatra
— either for the sake of entertainment or for enhancing their own popularity.
Like other urban centres, Kolkata developed its own subaltern culture through
songs, jingles, artistic designs, street-shows and so on. This new distinctive ‘urban
folk culture’ has been highlighted in Sumanta Banerji’s The Parlour and the
Streets, that re-lives this phase so vividly.
These outpourings of the urban
subaltern did not remain confined only to the performing arts. With the
migration of the ‘patua’ scroll-painters from the rural areas to Kolkata
(as most of the folk performers had done earlier) and their subsequent
settlement near the popular Kalighat temple, there evolved another urban folk
art-form in the city — the oft-mentioned ‘Kalighat pat’ paintings. Close on the
heels of the ‘patuas’ followed the ‘Bat-tala’ woodcut engravers
of north Kolkata — imitating the former’s style, improving the presentation,
lowering their price and competing for the same client-base, who was the rustic visitor, the poor pilgrim and the struggling
city-dweller. The lithograph, the chromo-lithographs, the oleographs and their
prints, like the colourful ‘Chorebagan’ prints, have evoked continuing
admiration for their fidelity, imagination and simplicity — as well as sadness
at the ‘demise’ of such pulsating folk arts in twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. The clay-modellers of the city are still in demand but many scholars
bemoan that folk art is ‘dead’ in Kolkata as cheap, mass-produced goods have
killed the artisans’ creations in every conceivable sphere. While this is
considerably correct, it is perhaps not wholly true, as it is my submission
that the Durga puja celebrations are indeed living and pulsating expression of
urban my folk culture. All the craftsmanship that enrich the pujas like the
designing and execution of the massive, theme pandals with their
exquisite interior frills and decoration are new avenues of folk art. The
imaginative sculpting of the goddess and her retinue and the special lighting
are all products of a refined urban folk culture. Even the songs, that include
the traditional pre-puja Aagamoni songs and the prolific
literature that are created are also cultural outpourings, though not
necessarily of the folk variety. The dhunochi-naach dances that are done
before the image, by balancing lighted urns of smoking and burning incense on
one’s palms or between the teeth to the furious beat of the drums are surely a
part of folk culture.
The Durga
pujas of Kolkata are, thus, not just an annual festival or the carnival of the
city, nor even the most vivid symbols of Bengali culture — they are, in fact,
the best exhibitions of creative spirit that manifests itself through the
popular arts and They are also the most appropriate occasion to be in the city
of joy and freedom, to soar high on the wings of human spirit, that knows no
bounds for four blessed days.
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