How women are claiming their place in both the spiritual and celebratory aspects of Durga Puja

Aishwarya Rai as Paro, a “thakurain” after marriage, matches steps at the Durga Puja held at her opulent marital home with Madhuri Dixit’s Chandramukhi, a courtesan. Both women are in love with Devdas, a lovelorn alcoholic, as he is also portrayed to be in the original novel of the same name by Bengali writer Saratchandra, published in 1917.

One major point of the film’s departure from the novel, however, is the couture and behaviour of the two above-mentioned women.

For one, the film has a “thakurain”, a woman of a high social class, dancing, that too vigorously, with a “tawaif”, a courtesan. This combination would be unthinkable in a Bengali household, of any class, in the early 19th century. Two, a woman from a “respectable” household dancing at all during a Durga Puja was unthinkable, then and for a long time to come. Leaders of the so-called Bengali Enlightenment, such as Rabindranath Tagore, were at that point only slowly ushering in dance as a form of art in which “respectable” women could participate. Three, whatever the women would wear then, they would not be draped in mainstream Bollywood designer stuff, blingy and clingy, though it was passed off in the film as the traditional Bengali red-bordered sari.

Serious critics were upset with this representation of Bengali society and culture, carelessly transcending all limits of plausibility, but their disapproval was no match for the power of Bollywood, which, as a matter of fact, had a liberating effect on women in Bengal. Women dancing became a big part of the Durga Puja celebrations. This was too loud, too vulgar, too Bollywood, not in accordance with Bengali culture, many cried – but there was no stopping the women.

Traditionally, women had not taken part as dancers in the Durga Puja celebrations, other than in staged performances as part of cultural events, a Durga Puja staple. But after a little more than two decades of Bhansali’s Devdas, immersion (visarjan/bhashan) processions are unthinkable without women dancing as lustily as the men. Maybe more. They are as adept as the men as well at dhunuchi naach, a ceremonial dance that requires the performer to balance the dhunuchi, a clay pot containing burning incense, with challenging movements.

Bhansali’s big-screen extravaganza had done nothing to deepen the understanding of Bengali culture. On the contrary, it was just a means to dish up Bollywood with a different flavour. But his completely ahistoric dance sequence unleashed an energy that quickly undid the cultural control of centuries on women’s participation in the public celebration of the festival.

“I have been joining the bhashan procession for the past few years,” says Pompa Das, a woman in her early 40s, as Bengal waits impatiently for the start of the festival, being celebrated this year between October 16 and 21. A resident of Mograhat in South 24 Parganas, she works as a domestic help in Kolkata, commuting 55km daily. “I don’t dance,” she says. “But my daughter Dipti always does,” she says. Dipti is 22, a college student.

Dressed to the hilt differently on every Puja evening, she dances whenever she gets the chance with her girlfriends, as enthusiastically as a 50-year old resident of Ekdalia, who has practised her moves over the years to become an efficient dhunuchi dancer.

From there to “taking over” other spaces in the Durga Puja celebrations, including the professions associated with the worship. In recent years, Bengal has seen women priests conducting the puja and women dhakis (drummers) adding a splash of colour with their red-border white saris. Both have traditionally been male bastions, often with the work being passed down through generations of male family members.

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Twenty-two-year-old Bipasha Bose started playing the dhaak as a kid, despite her family not being traditionally associated with the profession (many male dhakis follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers). “My father was a graphic designer for a publication, but he was interested in music and would sometimes play the dhaak at neighbourhood functions. I would accompany; my interest started from there,” explains Bose, who started the North 24 Parganas-based RadhaRani Dhaki Somproday, a group of predominantly women dhakis, some four years back. “When I voiced my intention of taking this up professionally, there was no resistance from my family, but people around did discourage me,” she says.

“In this line of work, there are no structured hours; I travel extensively, play in all-night shows… it did raise eyebrows. There was also resistance from some male dhakis, who believe this to be a male-only profession, but there have also been those who have encouraged me.” Her fiancé, Hari, is a dhaki like her, and part of the same group. “Most of our work comprises stage performances, but we also receive bookings for pujas. We play in groups of 11 or more; there are usually two-three men in each group. This Durga Puja, our dhakis will be playing at Guwahati and Jamshedpur, among other places.”

One of the biggest challenges for women dhakis is the dhaak itself… the big, wooden instrument is heavy and carrying and playing it requires significant strength. “When I started, I couldn’t carry the dhaak for more than 10-15 minutes; now I can carry it for about three hours,” says Bose. And while she continues to play the traditional wooden instrument, she says there are lighter, tin-and-fibreglass dhaak available now for women. “The sound is not the same as that of a wooden dhaak, but blended with the traditional instrument it creates a different kind of music.”

Dipa Das, who leads Bhabatarini Mahila Dhaki Sampradaya, an all-woman dhaki group from Maslandapur in North 24 Parganas district, talks about her hard training in an online interview. The youngest member of the group, a 14-year-old, says that she does not find it difficult to carry the large dhak, which hangs from the neck, because “all that I see is Durga’s eyes”.

In Kumartuli, the clay artisans’ hub in Kolkata, where the idols of Durga and other deities are made, women artists have grown in number. China Pal, the leading woman artist, whose images have a distinct, detailed style, is so busy with this year’s Durga Puja starting on Friday that she can barely speak. But she reminds that learning every aspect of image-making was hard, especially with few women image-makers around her. Besides, she reminds, “I have always strictly followed tradition.”

A group of women priests, Shubhamastu, is also similarly busy this season. Shubhamastu, popular and in demand, performs pujas, as well as weddings. According to reports, the collective, which started with four core group members, is now 16 strong. In 2021, as the world was grappling with the Covid pandemic, Kolkata’s 66 Pally Durga Puja committee made a departure from tradition, getting the Shubhamastu team to conduct the puja. The organisers named the initiative ‘Maa Er Haathe Maa Er Abahon’, or ‘Mothers To Worship The Mother Goddess’. According to interviews given by the women priests, the collective follows Vedic traditions in their ceremonies, interspersed with music such as Rabindrasangeet renditions.

She adds: “Of course there is resistance, from conservative family members, from male priests; still I feel the society is changing. The proper enunciation of the mantras is important to the rituals. When people see me doing that, when I help everyone connect and participate in the rituals by explaining the meaning of the Sanskrit verses and chants, then they are all appreciative.”

Women are also filling up the high posts in puja committees, especially in the gated communities.

Of particular significance is the Durga Puja that is organised by the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, an organisation of about 20,000 sex-workers from Bengal. In 2013, after several legal battles in the court and with the police, and against society, which did not want sex-workers to have the right to celebrate the mother goddess in public space, Durbar started its own puja in Sonagachhi, Kolkata’s biggest red light district. Every year, the puja has got bigger.

Bishakha Laskar, secretary, Durbar, points at another triumph. According to tradition, the clay with which a Durga image is made has to have a portion of earth collected from the doorstep of a sex-worker, as that earth is full of the virtue of men, which men apparently leave behind when they cross the threshold. “We have been discouraging this regressive tradition by refusing to give to image-makers this earth,” says Laskar.

The year 2015 was another landmark. That year, China Pal had created an Ardhanarishwar (androgynous) image for a transgender community Durga Puja, adhering to her traditional style.

“The entry of women is welcome in any area,” says noted sarod player and writer on arts and culture Anindya Banerjee. “Ideally, women should have the choice to enter any space, any profession,” he adds. It is also important to not have preconceived notions. “The women dhakis are excellent. They play as well as the men. We have to remember that a dhaki has to undergo a long and rigorous training,” Banerjee says.

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Despite all this, a vacuum remains at the heart of the worship of Durga. Despite the women priests, the dhakis and the general dilution of gender stereotypes around the figure of the goddess, women’s participation in the festival remains something of a novelty; even when local women shoulder the responsibility of organising a Puja, the detail becomes something to advertise, highlighting the departure from norm.

In 2022, an organising committee in Kolkata’s satellite town, New Town, roped in women dhakis and priests for their Durga Puja. It was reportedly the first community puja in New Town. The women headlining of the celebration was in keeping with their theme, “Banga Janani” (Mother Bengal). They made news.

“Not many still take pujas conducted by women priests seriously,” says a Salt Lake resident, who hails from a priest’s family. This is because the religious texts about the practice of the puja hardly mention women.

“I follow the Kalikapuran to perform the puja,” says Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya, who has been a priest at Durga Pujas for more than three decades. “Only the priest, the purohit, can be the brati, the person who is being entrusted with carrying out the worship on behalf of the person who has organised the puja,” says Bhattacharya. There is no indication in the text that a woman can be a purohit, he says. “The person organising the puja, who has to make a sankalp, a resolution, can be a woman. Otherwise there is no specific mention of women in the text,” he says.

That is why, traditionally, the putohit has always been male. When the deity is the goddess worshipped as Shakti, power, this is ironic.

Especially since, as Bhattacharya points out, Kalikapuran says nothing about women not being allowed any role in the worship.

It’s all in the interpretation, therefore, and for generations it is men who have been doing the interpreting. Not any more, with women in Bengal eager to reclaim their share in both the spiritual and the celebratory aspects of Durga Puja.