Durga Puja

Durga Puja celebrates Goddess Durga’s victory over the buffalo demon Mahishasura and, in Bengal, also carries the tender idea of the Goddess returning to her parental home with her children. The festival unfolds through Mahalaya, Bodhan and the great worship days of Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami and Navami, before Vijayadashami brings farewell and immersion. Months beforehand artisans shape Durga and her divine family in clay, and neighbourhoods build elaborate pandals that become spaces for worship, art, music and community life. The image of Durga with her many weapons and lion represents the combined divine power that confronts destructive arrogance when the gods themselves cannot defeat Mahishasura. On Dashami the clay images are carried in procession and immersed, returning symbolically to the elements from which they were made. Kolkata’s Durga Puja was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021 as Intangible Cultural Heritage, recognising both its devotional depth and its remarkable collective artistry.

Durga Puja is valued for devotion, family tradition and the spiritual or seasonal meaning attached to the day.

The image is made at Kumartuli through the year and the eyes are painted last, on Mahalaya. Pandals open on Shashthi. Anjali is offered on Ashtami, dhunuchi is danced in the smoke, and on Dashami married women put sindoor on the image and on each other before it goes to the river.

Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Tripura keep the last five days of Navratri as a public festival of pandals and pratimas; Gujarat keeps the same nine nights as garba; the Gangetic north keeps them as Ramlila, ending in Ravana's burning rather than Durga's departure. Mysore's Dasara is a state procession.