Origin of Durga Puja: Ancient Roots of India’s Grandest Festival

-Bhoomee Vats

Durga Puja is a festival that includes the worship of the mother goddess, and it is one of the most important and major festivals of India. It is not just a religious festival, but it also constitutes the emotions of reunion and renewal of the spiritual self while celebrating the traditions and norms of our culture. This festival lasts for ten days, and hence earns its name Navaratri, out of which the last four days, called Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, and Dashami, are the ones that are celebrated in the true sense of a festival with much grandeur and festivities. This festival is one of the most essential festivals of Bengal, where people put up pandals for darshan and celebrate their traditions and customs. 

Durga Puja is not just a religious event. It is the celebration of culture, traditions, and community. The festival, through its festivities, encourages people to come together, helping to generate a sense of belonging and unity. Cultural programmes that take place include dance, music, and theatre, which are all integral to the festivities, providing a platform for local artists to showcase their talents. This paves the path for the exchange of cultural expressions, enriching the community and strengthening social bonds.

Origin and History

The first grand worship of Goddess Durga in recorded history is mentioned to have been celebrated in the late 1500s. According to folklore, the landlords, or zamindars, of Dinajpur and Malda were the first to start the tradition of Durga Puja in Bengal. Another source states that Raja Kangshanarayan of Taherpur or Bhabananda Mazumdar of Nadiya was the one who organized the first Sharadiya or Autumnal Durga Puja in Bengal in the year 1606. However, the origin of the community puja is dedicated to the twelve friends of Guptipara in Hoogly, West Bengal, who initially collaborated and collected contributions from the local people to organize the first community puja, which was called the ‘baro-yaari’ puja, also known as the ‘twelve-pal’ puja, and this was in 1790. The baro-yaari puja was eventually brought to Kolkata in 1832 by Raja Harinath of Cossimbazar, who organized and performed the Durga Puja at his ancestral home, which was in Murshidabad from 1824 to 1831, notes Somendra Chandra Nandy in ‘Durga Puja: A Rational Approach’ published in The Statesman Festival, 1991.

“The baro-yaari puja gave way to the sarbajanin or community puja in 1910, when the Sanatan Dharmotsahini Sabha organized the first truly community puja in Baghbazar in Kolkata with full public contribution, public control, and public participation. Now the dominant mode of Bengali Durga Puja is the ‘public’ version,” write M. D. Muthukumaraswamy and Molly Kaushal in Folklore, Public Sphere, and Civil Society. The institution of the community Durga Puja in the 18th and the 19th century Bengal contributed vigorously to the development of Hindu Bengali culture.

British Involvement in Durga Puja

The research paper further mentions that:

“High level British officials regularly attend Durga Pujas organized by influential Bengalis and British soldiers actually participate in the pujas, have praised, and even salute the deity, but ‘the most amazing act of worship was performed by the East India Company itself: in 1765 it offered a thanksgiving Puja, no doubt as a politic act to appease its Hindu subjects, on obtaining the Diwani of Bengal.’ (Sukanta Chaudhuri, ed. Calcutta: the Living City, Vol. 1: The Past) And it is reported that even the Company auditor-general John Chips organized Durga Puja at his Birbhum office. In fact, the full official participation of the British in the Durga Puja continued till 1840, when a law was promulgated by the government banning such participation.”

In 1911, as the capital of British India shifted from Bengal to Delhi, many Bengalis migrated and moved to the city in search of work in government offices. The first Durga Puja in Delhi was therefore held in the year 1910, when it was performed by ritually blessing the ‘mangal kalash’, which symbolizes the deity. This Durga Puja, which celebrates its centennial in 2009, is also known as the Kashmere Gate Durga Puja, currently organized by the Delhi Durga Puja Samiti in the lawns of Bengali Senior Secondary School, Alipur Road, Delhi.

Evolution of the ‘Pratima’ and the ‘Pandal’

The traditional icon of the goddess worshiped during the Durga Puja is in line with the iconography delineated in the scriptures. In Durga, the Gods bestowed their powers to co-create a beautiful goddess with ten arms, each carrying their most lethal weapon. The tableau of Durga also features her four children, Kartikeya, Ganesha, Saraswati, and Lakshmi. Traditional clay image of Durga, or pratima, made of clay with all five gods and goddesses under one structure, is known as ‘ek-chala’ (‘ek’ = one, ‘chala’ = cover). Two kinds of embellishments are used on clay, sholar saaj and daker saaj. In the former, the pratima is traditionally decorated with the white core of the shola reed, which grows within marshlands. As the devotees grew wealthier, beaten silver (rangta) was used. The silver used to be imported from Germany and was delivered by post (dak). Hence the name Daker Saaj.

The huge temporary canopies, held by a framework of bamboo poles and draped with colorful fabric, that house the icons are called ‘pandals.’ Modern pandals are innovative, artistic, and decorative at the same time, offering a visual spectacle for the numerous visitors who go ‘pandal-hopping’ during the four days of Durga Puja.