East India Company, Communal Pujas and Mishti Inventors of Bengal 

Bengali Hindu households respond to the Mayer Dak as Durga Puja arrives in all its splendor,  as we prepare for this autumn festival of welcoming the mother home. An amalgamation of cross cultural cuisines and religious traditions which came as a result of Bengal’s active participation in the structure of the history of India, Durga Puja was celebrated inside the homes of people, in their own simple ways with the fervor of a devotee. Yet, today we enjoy it as a more large scale event.

Nobin Das was no inventor. At least he didn’t mean to become one until he learnt the complex art of making a cheese dessert or chhana from Orissa and tried to recreate it back home in Kolkata, in 1868. But the journey had been a long one and Mr. Das was a believer of saving time, so instead he invented what soon became the most popular dessert out of Bengal: the revered Sponge Roshogolla. This was around the time when the Durga Pujas had also become a lively festival, where the British leant their glamour quotient as honored guests and the hosts considered this a mark of their status.

Apparently one of the first recorded mass celebrations of Durga Puja happened in Malda and Dinajpur in the 16^th century. Patronized by the Nawabs of that era, 6 zamindars of Nadia, Burdwan, Natore, Dinajpur, Birbhum, and Bisnupur were given the privilege to display their wealth, fervour and share the joy with their communities. As much as these 6 zamindars contributed towards unifying the Hindu community while maintaining a relationship of religious tolerance with the ruling Nawabs, Raja Nabakrishna Deb, founder of the Shovbazar Raj family in Kolkata celebrated the decline of the Muslim rule at the hands of Robert Clive. After the battle of Plassey and Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah’s crushing defeat, in 1757 the Munshi or clerk to Warren Hastings, Nabakrishna offered his own home and the deity of goddess Durga to Robert Clive, for thanksgiving.  The famous nautch girl Nikki Bai was invited and amidst the ham consumed and the alcohol drunk, all religious intentions more or less dwindled and from then onwards, many Hindus of Kolkata considered it a privilege to invite the British over for Durga Puja festivities. They even went as far as to fashion the mother goddess statues to look more like Queen Victoria. The British encouraged this show of fervor till the 1840, after which they totally banned it. So much for religious harmony! Yet, as upstarts like Nabakrishna took the opportunity of his job and his position to make a lavish affair of a simplistic religious ritual, the Barowari (12 friends) of Guptipara are responsible for making this a group or communal festival in 1790. This could also be as a result of the Cornwallis agreement where zamindars could not extract tax from their tenants anymore which led to the Barowari chipping in from the community members. The Barowari tradition later culminated into Sarbajanin Durga Puja in 1910, or an “all inclusive” festival and Durga Puja became what we know it as today.

In Bangladesh, the family of R P Shaha of the Kumudini Welfare trust in Mirzapore, Tangail still host the most organized and festive of pujas in the country. With the students of the Bateshwari Homes volunteering to serve the guests, Hindus from the neighbouring areas, guests from all over the country and patrons of the trust all gather to participate in the Sarbojanin Puja. The vegetable mix or niramish served with rice and chholar daal, cooked in the customary fashion with coconut, is often followed by malpoa as a dessert (or at least on the 9^th day or nabammi when yours truly went).

The famous zamindar family of Muktagacha in Mymensingh, the Chowdhurys, always held the best pujas. Rani Bimola Devi of the Chowdhury family built a twin Shiva temple where Durga Puja was also celebrated as a Sarbojanin affair. The Chowdhurys welcomed everyone and today their legacy lives on through another one of Bangladesh’s most famous desserts, the famous Monda of Muktagacha. Mr. Gopal Pal enjoyed the privileges of being the official sweetmeat maker of the zamindar, after he presented Raja Chowdhury with this unique creation of his in 1824. Today, his shop is still operating and run by his great grand children.

So as dashami draws near and Hindus far and wide prepare for the final leg of festivities and bidding their mother goddess a teary farewell, we pay homage to the course of events that led to this once homebound tradition to become a public one, that brings people of all religions and sects closer, through music, the art work of the goddess statues and above all, food! 

(This article of mine was printed in the Dhaka Tribune's Weekend Magazine called Weekend Tribune:

http://www.dhakatribune.com/sites/default/files/issue/2014/10/Weekend%202%EF%80%A221.pdf)