The festival has begun. The mood is not sombre; it is upbeat. In most of the over 5,000 sites where the Durga Puja will be celebrated across Kolkata, the idol of the goddess, her four children and the vanquished demon, have been installed. Some of these have been inaugurated by chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
Given the call by a variety of social media activists that Durga Puja 2024 should not be celebrated with the usual frenzy, which includes keeping scores on pandal-hopping, it is extraordinary that Banerjee was not heckled when she inaugurated the pujas. Nor did anyone put out a call to boycott the pujas she did inaugurate.
She is not forgotten, but the tragedy of the trainee doctor who was brutally raped and murdered in her workplace at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital no longer seems to dominate the public mood. The pandals that have incorporated the tragedy in subtle and crude ways are a reminder of the pledge by tens of thousands of the public, especially women, that justice must be delivered, the night must be reclaimed and the corrupt “system” that has a stranglehold on medical colleges and the health infrastructure needs to be overhauled.
In a few pandals, the goddess holds the lifeless body of the trainee doctor, reflecting the shock, horror and outrage that engulfed the city, the state and India. These are not necessarily the hugely expensive “theme” pujas and elaborate installations that take years of work to put together and months of planning and implementation by sculptors, artists, image makers, designers, light and sound experts, pandal makers and organisers.
On the one hand, she has become an elusive presence, a wraith. On the other, protests led by women against local police have become the norm since August 9, the latest victim being an underage student in Mahishmari in South 24 Parganas, underscoring the shift in public response, albeit limited, to sexual violence of one kind, rape and murder.
Outrage has acquired a familiar sequence. Local protests are followed by political actors from the opposition engaging in confrontations against the police to drive home the message that Banerjee’s government is anti-people, anti-women, corrupt and incompetent. And then Banerjee calls for a death sentence for the perpetrators following a speedy investigation and trial.
Like the rituals that usher in the goddess, the politics of protest had developed its own order of things. Even though the calendar of politics in West Bengal has been changing in recent years, to be precise, ever since the BJP decided to instrumentalise the Durga Puja to serve its Hindu majoritarian and communally divisive agenda, distracting the general public from its annual celebration of the festival is unpopular.
If the protests by the BJP continue through the pujas, it would mark a significant break with tradition. The chances of the BJP succeeding seem small, because shoppers have returned, the roads are clogged with office goers and pandal hoppers, the city is bright with LED lights in spectacularly creative displays and the race to snare prizes has begun. Banerjee has reason to heave a sigh of relief, because Bengalis and Kolkata have returned to normal, letting her off the hook.
The pujas have always been a break, after which the new political season begins. By the looks of it, this year will not be significantly different.
Also read: The R.G. Kar Protests Conquered Fear. But Have They Done Much Else?
Contemporary concerns, events that shock and thrill the public, have become themes for the intensely competitive race to win prizes and attract the largest crowds of pandal hoppers. The 2012 gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in a bus in New Delhi, the 1993 earthquake in Latur, the 2023 Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission, the gruelling trek of over ten crore migrant workers during COVID, basilicas, temples, public monuments including the Taj Mahal and Qutb Minar, railway disasters, folk culture, the recreation of villages from Rajasthan and Gujarat, pavilions designed to create consciousness about the environment and climate change have all been incorporated in the Durga Puja.
The goddess has been visualised in different forms, traditional and experimental; an image in the mind of her maker. In 2023, the dark goddess, stripped of majesty, was installed in a pandal that declared “Hote Chai Na Uma,” which translated is a negation of her gender, her vulnerability, her divinity. The pandal was an intensely disturbing exploration of gender violence, in its multiple forms, from domestic captivity, trafficking and prostitution to being the object of lust imagined as predatory vultures eyeing their prey.
The dialogue between the public and the puja emerges in the complex design of the installations. For instance, the Purbachal Shakti Sangha puja has a resplendent goddess in the style of the famous Queen Victoria as Empress of India sculpture in the garden of Kolkata’s landmark Victoria Memorial, surrounded by photographs and sculpted pieces of men who once ruled India and the men who fought to oust them.
The Purbachal Shakti Sangha puja. Photo: By arrangement.
In the multiple and simultaneous dialogues between them there is a stunning quiet and dark corner, like a bottomless pit. A stark mask-like face looks out from the darkness; she is the R.G. Kar doctor. The pedestals topped by compacted blocks of debris that can be found on the streets reflects the bits and pieces, the leftovers of existence. The artist explained the corner as a quiet zone, where viewers could stand and grieve as well as reflect on the tragedy that has dominated public consciousness for weeks.
The awarded and acclaimed visual artist, Partha Dasgupta, has curated the installation, with the imperious goddess with a baby Ganesha in her lap, reigning over her realm, flanked by three of her four children done in the style of Greek marble sculptures. The theme is colonialism in conversation with freedom fighters and post-colonial India.
The concept is complex as the mostly men in the photographs represent different lineages of the confrontation with empire, from Tilak, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Khudiram Bose and on to Gandhi, whose presence is marked by books lining a tall bookshelf made in ceramic by Ashish Chowdhury.
The photographs by Bijoy Chowdhuri are a marvellous chronicle of times past and the time when the bronze sculptures were pulled off their pedestals and replaced by sculptures of the men and women leaders who participated in the freedom movement.
The art and the complex ideas breathing life into the complicated design of the pavilions is an open invitation to the public to find meaning, interpreting it in different ways, because the interpretation is not dictated by the artist. By creating a separate enclave within a larger concept, Dasgupta and the organisers have made the R.G. Kar doctor, the city and every protestor and dissenter, in other words the political and the social, an integral part of the Durga Puja, as sacred ritual and as secular celebration.
In doing so, the curator has allowed the viewing public to decide what it will see and how it will do so, including the secretary of the Purbachal Shakti Sangha, Nirmal Mukherjee, who emphasised that the puja, its art and its design were ephemeral; the permanent was the anticipation of the arrival of the deity; it signified her return every year in a new form.
The Durga Puja as celebration and festival, before and after its acquisition of the World Heritage tag bestowed by UNESCO, is integral to West Bengal’s life and economy. One estimate put together by the Forum for Durgotsab, an umbrella organisation of community pujas, indicates that the festival involves transactions that add up to a staggering Rs 40,000 crore, or around 3% of the state’s domestic product. It keeps businesses, especially small businesses and trade going, and the marginalised like hawkers, street food vendors, suppliers of flowers required for ritual, including garland makers, afloat.
This is where the puja, the turbulence and the political combine and recombine in different ways. The mood is ephemeral, a gap in time from the routines of daily living, much like the art. Each year the puja is celebrated, but that celebration is located within a context. This year, the context is the R.G. Kar doctor.
Shikha Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based commentator.