Durga Puja and the myth of the universal

Isarjan, depicting an immersion procession, is stated to had been painted among 1915 and 1920. The comparison between darkness and luminescence, function of Gaganendranath's style throughout a selected period, is engrossing; the departing goddess is at the centre of an incandescent orb, as it had been, while the figures of revellers - men and, probable, ladies - continue to be dimly lit. (The picture being circulated on the net seems to be an embellished version, demanding this delicate stability among light and dark.) In his essay, "The Painter of Modern Life", Baudelaire contended that the purpose of cutting-edge art and its practitioners must be to seize all that is straight away fleeting - "the passing moment"- and transcendental. Visarjan's roots, it can be argued, are contemporary on this feel. For it information a moment in passing: an immersion procession. But what it saves for posterity inside the mind's eye is something sentient that transcends that solitary speck in time: a feel of anxiety evoked by means of a chaotic - however democratic - phenomenon that stays atypical to Bengal's cultural panorama. To segments of the Bengali intelligentsia, the bhashaan and its paraphernalia - dancing and under the influence of alcohol excesses - are but to be absolutely neutered of genteel terror. They are, on this feverish imagination, the signal of a transient crumble of entrenched segregation, comparable to Rome's barbarians-at-the-gates second. Yet it has also been argued that the Pujas and bhashaan are representative in nature, supplying a temporary glimpse of a broader, inclusive fraternity.Bengal's Marxists - particularly their bhadralok purchasers - in electricity for over three decades since the overdue Seventies, determined a way out of this catch 22 situation thru negotiation. While denouncing the Pujas and describing its ritualistic exuberance as a supply of cultural infection, they had been now not hesitant to capitalize on the event's reputedly public credentials. What else can give an explanation for their logic of putting in stalls selling Marxist literature close to pandals, a sight this is but to be expunged from Calcutta's public spaces?Indeed, negotiation amongst competing motives underpins the records of the Pujas. Tapati Guha-Thakurta's In the Name of the Goddess, a deeply researched, richly illustrated and informative volume, dissects the layers inside this method of negotiation with admirable precision. Guha-Thakurta argues that one sort of war of words - can there be any negotiation without battle? - pertained to the competition between components of the civic apparatus (the police, fireplace brigade, electricity companies, environmental regulators and law) and Puja organizers who, it's far claimed, constitute the network. The negotiations are spirited: Guha-Thakurta writes that "... Notions of civic rights and responsibilities, like the ones of licences and bounds, remain incredibly fraught in this domain of famous joyful celebration. What maintains surfacing are contesting definitions of the 'public' and the 'civic'..." Another form of confrontation unfolds within. The commercialization of network Pujas has fuelled a collective craving for, what Guha-Thakurta terms, "a once-pristine shape of the Pujas". This nostalgia has benefited the Pujas of Calcutta's banedi baris, the repositories of way of life and aristocratic sensibilities, specially. What makes this nostalgia ironical and complicated in identical measure is that memory, on this context, serves as a sieve, filtering out inconvenient truths to introduce an detail of distortion on this collective reminiscence. For the inception of the sarbojanin (widespread) Durgotsav - journeying from banedi to barowari to grow to be sarbojanin - may be traced to a backlash against the exclusivity of the barir pujo, which, until the mid-nineteenth century, was the monopoly of Calcutta's prosperous families.But has this negotiated freedom from banedi trappings given the Pujas that coveted communitarian aspect? Guha-Thakurta's inference is unambiguous: "While the Barowari Pujas introduced a wonderful change within the social network of the festival, they left in large part undisturbed the involvement of various artisanal castes and carrier-providers within the accomplishing of the ritual event, without ever integrating them into the civic lifestyles of the celebrations." Guha-Thakurta writes that there may be a paucity of credible research to explore whether or not the sarbojanin Puja has subtly bolstered or rejected comprehensively those styles of exclusion. Perhaps an inference may be drawn from the following records. The declare of Calcutta's Pujas to be sarbojanin is, arguably, borne out through numbers. Over two thousand pandals were erected within the town this year. Yet, there remains a perceptible inertia to disturb or, greater importantly, realign iniquitous equations. It would be interesting to find out how many Puja committees are inclined to simply accept the services of a found out priest who's a Dalit, or, for that rely, a girl, or a member of a sexual minority. How many Muslims - they make up nearly 30 consistent with cent of the kingdom's population - are invited to partake of the Navami bhog, a dinner party that supposedly nourishes the concept of the community?What has been discernible in recent times is the passion of Bengal's liberal constituency to keep up the Durga Puja as a deterrent to the march of majoritarianism across India. Sharod is exceedingly the season to churn out examples of Pujas, from the town and the districts, which can be participatory: Murshidabad's Lalgola, Burdwan's Dharan and Calcutta's Kidderpore and Beniapukur, amongst others, were stated as exemplars of a valuable syncretism. What isn't tested in the urgency is the ability of such sporadic participation to noticeably project the embedded strains of differentiation. Durgotsav is apparently a glue that makes the network stick. But can not the glue be an adhesive to preserve status-quo?It is actual that the Pujas have, since its inception, opened up newer kinds of areas and relationships via negotiation. But political encroachment - be it Mamata Banerjee's doles to clubs or the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti's vociferous objection to an advertisement campaign, imaginatively titled 'Pet Pujo', showing the cooking of meat for the duration of the competition this 12 months - now threatens the potency of such parleys.One wonders whether or not Gaganendranath, if he had been alive, could have painted a modern scene of visarjan. The sight of the goddess being towed in the front of the leader minister in an obedient report is perhaps the final nail on the sarbojanin coffin. Uddalak.Mukherjee@abp.In Dailyhunt http://doodleordie.com/profile/dekkojekkos

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