Durga Puja in Kolkata Joins UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage List
On 15 December 2021 UNESCO inscribed Kolkata's autumn festival of the goddess Durga on its list of intangible cultural heritage. For five days the city becomes an open-air exhibition of temporary temples.
UNESCO inscribed Durga Puja in Kolkata on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 15 December 2021, at the sixteenth session of its intergovernmental committee. The festival is the principal event of the year in the capital of West Bengal and among the largest public festivals in Asia.
The festival
Durga Puja celebrates the goddess Durga and her victory over a demon. It falls in autumn, in September or October, according to the lunar calendar. The main observances occupy five days, named Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami and Vijaya Dashami. On the last, the images of the goddess are carried in procession to the river and immersed.
What distinguishes the festival in Kolkata is its setting. The goddess is worshipped in pandals, temporary structures of bamboo and cloth put up in streets, parks and courtyards across the city. Each houses a clay image of Durga with her children. In recent decades the pandals have become works of art and architecture in their own right, designed by artists around a theme and rebuilt every year. Walking from one to another through the night, known as pandal-hopping, is how the city takes part.
From family houses to the street
The festival began in the houses of landed families. The Sabarna Roy Choudhury family started its celebration at Barisha in 1610. In 1757 Nabakrishna Deb began the puja at Shobhabazar Rajbari, in the north of the city, which is still held. In the early twentieth century the community puja arrived, organised by a neighbourhood association and paid for by subscription. This form, called barowari or sarbojanin, meaning “for all”, is now the main one. Several thousand community pujas are held in Kolkata each year.
The clay images are made by hereditary craftsmen, many of them working in the potters’ quarter of Kumartuli, by the river in north Kolkata, where the figures can be seen taking shape in the weeks before the festival.
For travellers
The dates change each year and should be checked well ahead, since hotels fill. The pandals open to visitors several days before the main festival, from Mahalaya, and the early days are the least crowded. The old family pujas in the mansions of north Kolkata, many of which admit visitors, show the festival in its earlier form and are best seen by day. The themed pandals of the south are at their best when lit at night. Parts of the city are closed to traffic during the festival, and the metro and walking are the practical ways to get about.
Kolkata is the gateway to Santiniketan, Tagore’s university town, to the north, and to Darjeeling in the hills.