Who 'owns' Durga Puja? VHP’s attempt to define Bengal’s biggest festival

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has opened a fresh debate in Bengal by seeking to influence how Durga Puja should be celebrated. At a discussion in Kolkata's Salt Lake area attended by puja organisers, priests and members of the Forum for Durgotsav, the organisation called for the festival to follow 'ancient Sanatan traditions and scriptural norms' rather than become a display of 'show-off'.

The intervention is significant because Durga Puja in Bengal has never been only a religious ritual. It is worship, art, community life and public culture rolled into one. The VHP, however, appears keen to draw a sharper boundary around the festival — and, in doing so, risks overlooking precisely what makes Kolkata's Durga Puja distinctive.

Its proposed slogan is: 'Religion is personal, and festivals belong to the respective faith', a direct challenge to the phrase associated with former chief minister Mamata Banerjee: 'Religion is personal, but festivals belong to everyone.' The latter became a political expression of Bengal's tradition of people across communities participating in Durga Puja.

The VHP argues that such an idea is unrealistic. 'This simply does not happen,' it said, claiming that 'no religion operates this way, nor does any religion endorse such a concept'. But that argument misses the particular social character of Bengal's Puja. People from different communities participating in the festival does not mean they are being asked to adopt another religion. For many Bengalis, that openness is precisely what makes the festival culturally distinctive.

And there is something more than sentiment at stake here. It is precisely this public, inclusive and collaborative character that helped Kolkata's Durga Puja earn UNESCO recognition as intangible cultural heritage in 2021.

UNESCO describes Durga Puja as 'the best instance of the public performance of religion and art, and a thriving ground for collaborative artists and designers'. Its documentation notes that during the festival, 'the divides of class, religion and ethnicities collapse' as millions of people move through the city's installations and pandals. The nomination submitted by India goes further, describing the festival's character as 'intrinsically inclusive, secular, inter-community and inter-class'.

That is an important point in the current argument. The UNESCO recognition was not a prize for a sanitised, purely ritual version of Durga Puja. It recognised a living tradition in which religious worship coexists with public art, community participation, craftsmanship and social interaction.

Kolkata's Puja has consequently become one of the world's great public art phenomena. UNESCO describes its large-scale installations and pavilions as a thriving space for artists and designers, while its own cultural material has described the festival as the world's biggest public art festival.

The VHP is also questioning the artistic experimentation that has transformed Kolkata's pujas over the past two decades. Raktim Das, the organisation's South Bengal publicity and outreach chief, complained that "in the rush to turn Durga Puja into a spectacle, anything and everything has been done in the name of themes". He further claimed, "Idols are being distorted in the name of artistic expression" and that "the elements of devotion, religious significance, and emotion were being lost".

There is a legitimate debate here. Durga Puja should not lose its devotional character simply because organisers want publicity, awards or footfall. As Anjan Ukil of Forum for Durgotsav observed, "one must not lose sight of the devotional aspect of the Puja while pursuing art". But he also made an equally important point: "A Puja conducted solely in the traditional manner would fail to captivate a global audience. Therefore, a harmonious blend of the two is required."

The controversy becomes sharper when the VHP moves from expressing an opinion to suggesting what should and should not appear in pandals. Nirbunananda Maharaj said, "Any theme adopted should reflect Sanatan culture" and warned that the organisation would protest against "items like shoes or torn clothes in the pandal". The VHP also criticised certain inauguration practices, arguing that "there is a distinction between Bodhan and inauguration" and insisting that rituals should begin from Pratipada, the first day of the full or new moon.

This raises the larger question: who gets to decide what constitutes the 'proper' Durga Puja?

Bengal's puja committees have produced socially conscious and imaginative installations on subjects ranging from migrant workers and climate change to gender, war and technology. The pandal has evolved into a temporary public-art space precisely because community organisers have been willing to experiment.

And that experimentation is not some recent departure from the festival's character. The transformation from private household worship to community Puja itself was a major social shift. UNESCO's documentation notes that community pujas evolved from the 18th century and brought together people from different castes, communities and walks of life.

There is, therefore, a certain irony in an attempt to define a single orthodox template for a festival whose modern public identity was built through precisely this process of opening itself to the community.

The VHP's concerns about preserving sanctity deserve to be debated. But a religious organisation cannot automatically claim authority over every aspect of a festival that has become a vast public cultural enterprise. Durga Puja involves priests and devotees, certainly, but also potters, painters, sculptors, carpenters, electricians, designers, musicians, volunteers, neighbourhood clubs and millions of visitors.

It is often described as a vast crowd-funded festival of public art because communities collectively finance and build these temporary worlds. The description captures something essential: the festival is made not by a single authority but by thousands of communities, artists and workers, and experienced by people across social and religious boundaries.

The choice, therefore, need not be between devotion and artistic freedom. The better answer is the one Ukil suggested: "A harmonious blend of the two is required."