Durga Puja History

Per the Durga Saptashati, the goddess has nine forms — Shailaputri to Siddhidatri — which are worshipped over the nine nights of Navratri. In the classic telling, the gods combine their energies into Durga to defeat the buffalo demon Mahishasura: the lion she rides symbolises her power, and the demon represents the evil she overcomes. This is the story retold in every pandal, in idol and theme form, every year.

According to the Bengali calendar, Sharadiya (autumnal) Durga Puja is held in the bright fortnight of the month of Ashwin — the timing the festival still follows, which is why the Gregorian dates drift slightly each year.

Kolkata‘s Durga Puja history runs through its aristocratic (bonedi) houses.the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family puja has run since 1610 — tracked on this site in the South-West belt — and Sobhabazar Rajbari has hosted its puja since 1757. These family pujas kept the traditional form alive: ekchala idols, where all five deities share one pedestal, and daker saaj, the shimmering ornamentation made from shola pith and silver foil.

In the early 20th century the puja went public. Bagbazar, North Kolkata, hosted one of Kolkata's earliest community pujas in 1911, and from there the sarbojanin (community) movement spread until the neighbourhood pandal became the city‘s defining autumn institution. In recent decades, theme pujas — a new artistic concept built fresh each year, like Suruchi Sangha, Chetla Agrani and Tridhara Sammilani in South Kolkata — turned the festival into an open-air art circuit. In 2021, in 2021 UNESCO added Kolkata's Durga Puja to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.