7. Approaches to Kālī Pūjā in Bengal

1. I am grateful to the participants at the South Asia Seminar, University of Chicago, where I delivered a version of this chapter on 25 May 2006.

2. There are two other public festivals to Kālī—Raṭanti Kālī Pūjā (the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight of the month of Māgh) and Phalaharaṇī Kālī Pūjā (the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight of Jyeṣṭha)—but these are very minor in comparison with the autumnal Pūjā and are rarely marked publicly. They are mentioned by William Ward, in A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos, 3rd ed., 4 vols. (1817; Delhi: Low Price Publications, 1990), 3:154. Raṭanti Caturdaśī is also discussed by Chintaharan Chakravarti, The Tantras: Studies on Their Religion and Literature (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1963), p. 92, and by Śaśibhūṣaṇ Dāśgupta, Bhārater Śakti-Sādhanā o Śākta Sāhitya (Calcutta: Sāhitya Saṁsad, 1960), pp. 75–76. For one Kolkata temple that celebrates them both, see Apūrba Caṭṭopādhyāy, “Ṭhanṭhane Siddheśvarī Kālī,” Sāptahik Bartamān (21 Oct. 2000): 17–21.

3. It is hard to know exactly when the first public Kālī Pūjā was established, as there are conflicting claims. For instance, in 1927, the Shyampukur Boy’s Barowari announced that it was already in its sixth year of the sarbajanīn format (Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 Oct. 1927, p. 3). However, most sources agree that the first sarbajanīn Kālī Pūjās were done in 1928; see chapter 6, p. 173 and n. 37. The mania for themes has now affected Kālī Pūjā too, the preparations being referred to as a “total package” even in Bengali. If you do not have a theme-and-lighting “cocktail,” say the organizers, your Pūjā will not come off. Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 21 Oct. 2006, Kolkata insert, p. 3. As a single example: the members of Chetla Agtani Club decided to put Kālī in the forests of South India, in the jungle where Veerappan held sway until he was killed on 18 Oct. 2004; next to her “hideout” was a model of the dacoit (Telegraph, 11 Nov. 2004, Metro section, p. 22). However, see n. 9 below.

4. Ward, A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos, 3:156–157.

5. This lack is true of the Kulārṇava Tantra (10.74–79 refers to the amāvasya lights of the Kārtik festival, but not to Kālī), Āgambāgīś’s Tantrasāra, and even Pūrṇānanda Giri’s Śyāmārahasya.

6. Chakravarti, The Tantras, p. 92. The text has been briefly described by Hara Prasad Shāstri, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Collections of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, revised and edited by Chintaharan Chakravarti, vol. 8, pt. 1: Tantra Manuscripts (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1939), p. 469. See folios 4a, 4b, 19a, and 24b of the Śyāmāsaparyāvidhi. Although the Śyāmāsaparyāvidhi itself does not mention Rājā Kṛṣṇacandra Rāy or any specific historical efforts to popularize Kālī’s public festival, Kāśīnāth’s purpose seems to be to attest to the benefits of Kālī worship, as though it were fairly new and needed justifying. For further specifics, see my Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kālī and Umā in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 174.

7. The oldest references to Kālī Pūjā I have been able to find derive from the 1830 September–October twice-weekly editions of the Dharmasabhā-sponsored Bengali Samācār Candrikā, which discuss controversies over the holiday’s dates. Most newspapers, whether in English or Bengali, however, do not mention Kālī Pūjā as a festival in its own right, aside from its rowdiness or benefit in providing a holiday escape from Calcutta, until 1915, when—oddly enough—it is the pro-British Englishman that begins to mention Diwali and Kālī Pūjā in the same article. The first photos of Kālī in the popular Statesman paper do not appear until 1 Nov. 1921, p. 9.

8. The three Kālī pictures were published on 3 Nov. 1964, p. 9.

9. In only 77 out of 302 pandals in Abhijit Ghoṣ’s survey (see chapter 6) did organizers attempt to make creative marks on their pandal exteriors. Most structures were open-air displays, with only enough roof and depth to cover the image. If anything was to be done on the outside, it was the opening lintels or gateways that received a little ornamentation. When budgets and imaginations expanded to allow the enclosure to become a full room, the typical choice was a thatched hut or small Bengali house, a generic temple, church, or gurudwara, or some sort of small civic building. Only eighteen committees in the 1998–2000 survey were more ambitious. Noteworthy displays included a small Bengali village scene, complete with paddy and water bodies; a mountainous terrain, featuring caves, tunnels, and even an underground goddess; the Kargil battlefield; replicas of the Somnāth Temple, the Taj Mahal, the Char Minar, the second Hooghly Bridge, and a beached Titanic; a representation of the sun chariot with its four horses; a house of cards; and a fiery volcano spewing out lava (and Kālī, who periodically sprang out of the mouth of the volcano together with smoke and loud exploding noises). These few are highly creative, but when compared to the plethora of much larger and more complex thematic designs evident at Durgā Pūjā, it becomes clear how much smaller and more subdued Kālī’s festival still is. Nevertheless, to the extent that Kālī Pūjā committees have the funds or the inclination, they now seek to copy Durgā Pūjā in the use of the “theme” “packages.”

10. Interview, 27 Oct. 1995.

11. I have only come across one story, told repeatedly in several variants, about Kālī’s identification with a small girl. One Gopīmohan Ṭhākur apparently had a daughter named Brahmamayī, whom he married off at the age of eight. When she was drowned while undergoing the bridal ritual of being bathed in the Ganges, the father collapsed in shock. Several days later he had a dream in which the Goddess appeared and said that she left him because he was marrying her off and sending her away. She told him to find a stone statue of her on the banks of the Ganges, and to install it and worship it; then she would never leave him. The image was found, but the temple could not be finished in Gopīmohan’s lifetime. See Amit Sen, “Śyāmnagarer Śyāma,” Sāptahik Bartamān (21 Oct. 2000): 19.

12. Interview, 9 Oct. 1991.

13. 24 Sept. 1957, pp. 1–2. Adds Hena Basu regarding that same, pre-Naxalite period, “I … remember clearly how senior members of my ancestral house would often warn that worship of Kali requires accurate rituals[,] or else beneficiaries of the Puja would have to suffer the wrath of the Goddess” (letter, 16 Aug. 1995).

14. Sudhīr Kumār Cakrabartī, “Kālīmūrti Rahasya,” in Dibyajyotir Pathe: Dharma o Darśan 8, no. 3 (1405/1998): 24.

15. Hindustan Times, Kolkata, 17 July 2003, p. 3.

16. 7 Nov. 1923, p. 2, in an article called “Śrī Śrī Kālī Pūjā.”

17. This Goddess tends to be large, without a distended tongue. She has only two hands, in the right of which is a demon’s forearm and in the left of which is a bowl of wine. Her eyes are bloodshot. She stands on Śiva lengthwise, with her right foot forward. In front of her, when depicted, are the cremation pits.

18. See Sāptahik Bartamān, 13 Nov. 1993, p. 8. Other Kolkata examples include Pũṭe Kālītalā, on Kalikrishna Thakur Street, which was once a forested area known for its dacoits who used to drown their victims down a particular nearby well, and Ḍākātī Kālī Temple on Southern Avenue. The town of Ranaghat is said to derive its name from that of a Kālī-dacoit named Rāṇā (or Rañjit?); Śibsaṅkar Bhārati, “Kalkātār Kālī-kathā,” Sāptahik Bartamān 12, no. 24 (6 Nov. 1999): 37–39.

19. Statesman, 12 Nov. 1993, p. 1.

20. But, retorts Islam, that belief goes both ways: police also say that any criminal they put behind bars on Kālī Pūjā will not bother them for the year to come. Times of India, 24 Oct. 2000, p. 2.

21. For an overview of such stories, see Bartamān, 22 Oct. 2000, p. 10.

22. Some family members apparently sit on a large cakra, and others have special garlands made from the bones of an Untouchable woman. Rādhāramaṇ Rāy, “Tāntrik Grāme Kālī Pujo,” Sāptahik Bartamān 13, no. 21 (21 Oct. 2000): 20–21.

23. The fact that Kālī did not emerge into the popular mainstream as fast as Durgā is partly because the Tantras consider naimittika pūjās (those done on special occasions) to be rajasic (not of the highest purity), and because such pūjās tended to attract householders, whereas most Tantric authors wrote their ritual manuals for sādhakas, not priests. Pratapaditya Pal suggests that the reason Kṛṣṇānanda Āgambāgīś did not include instructions on Durgā’s annual festival, though it was available by his time in smṛti texts, is that he did not conceive of his work as having relevance to householders’ interests. See Pratapaditya Pal, Hindu Religion and Iconology According to the Tantrasara (Los Angeles: Vichitra Press, 1981), pp. 10–11 and 21.

24. Although not featured in this book, it is worth noting that while the Durgās of the locality are being immersed, North Indians resident in Bengal celebrate Rāma’s victory over Rāvaṇa by burning the latter’s effigy.

25. Abhī Dās, “Sekāle Bāṅgālīr Kālīpūjā,” in Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 10 Nov. 1985, p. 7.

26. Śaibāl Biśvās, “Ye ādhār ālor adhik,” Rabibār Pratidin, 10 Nov. 1996, p. G.

27. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 18 Oct. 1971, p. 7; 31 Oct. 1978, pp. 4 and 5; and 23 Oct. 1984, p. 4.

28. The most famous of Kālī’s meditational images, from the fifteenth-century Kālī Tantra,“Karālavadanāṃ ghorāṃ muktakeśīṃ caturbhujām,” first introduces the word viparītaratā. This emphasis on the sexualized relationship between Kālī and Śiva is repeated in later Tantric dhyānas: “Añjanādrinibhāṃ Devīṃ Karālavadanāṃ Śivām,” from the Svatantra Tantra; “Virūpākṣakṛta-dhyāna,” from the Āgamatattvavilāsa; and “Sadyaśchinnaśiraḥ kṛpāṇamabhayaṃ,” from the Mantramahodadhiḥ. See chapter 6, n. 10. See also Śrī Śrī Kālīpūjā Paddhati, by Paṇḍit Śyāmācaraṇ Kabiratna, 7th ed. (Calcutta: Rādhā Pusthakālay, 1393/1986), pp. 54–55; and same title by Paṇḍit Śyāmācaraṇ Sāṃkhyatīrtha (Calcutta: Rājendra Library, n.d.), pp. 46–47.

29. Viewed on 13 Dec. 2000.

30. This was acquired, probably in a set from an exhibition, by the British Museum in 1894. Viewed on 1 Aug. 2000.

31. I am grateful to T. Richard Blurton, curator for South Asian art at the museum, who showed me this piece in the museum’s archives on 1 Aug. 2000.

32. This temple was established in 1804. Note that the Goddess is seated cross-legged on Śiva, though at right angles to him, which masks the suggestion of viparīta rati.

33. Abadhūt lived in Chinsurah, where Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya took me to see the painting in his house on 9 Oct. 1991. He was a colorful figure, and wrote about his spiritual experiences and travels as a Tantric practitioner. See his Sādhak Jīban Samagra (Calcutta: Mitra and Ghoṣ Publishers, 1982), also mentioned in chapter 6, n. 25.

34. This discomfort was related to me by a Bengali woman who grew up in Kolkata; our communication was facilitated through the kindness of Jeffrey J. Kripal, who introduced her husband to me via email, 9 Aug. 2006.

35. Times of India, 10 Oct. 2000, Calcutta insert, p. 1.

36. For a discussion of this story as it is found in the Caṇḍī Purāṇa, see Usha Menon and Richard Shweder, “Dominating Kālī: Hindu Family Values and Tantric Power,” in Encountering Kālī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West, ed. Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 80–99.

37. Interviews, Sujay Ganguli, 17 Sept. 2000; Chameli Mitra, 22 Sept. 2000; Súbhamay Dawn, 5 Oct. 2000; and Amarnāth Dawn, 5 Oct. 2000.

38. Interviews, Śephāli Bose and Ārati Deb, 29 Sept. 2000; and Śiśir Mallik, 30 Sept. 2000.

39. Interview, Milan Datta (of the Thanthania Datta family), 30 Sept. 2000.

40. Binay Ghoṣ, in an article called “Mā: Mātṛpūjā,” Vibhāva (Monsoon no., 1386/1979): 30.

41. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Irvington, 1966).

42. See Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14.

43. Milton B. Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 148–196.

44. Gananath Obeyesekere, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 64–70.

45. See Joanne Punzo Waghorne, “Chariots of the Gods: Riding the Line Between Hindu and Christian,” in Popular Christianity in India: Riting Between the Lines, ed. Selva J. Raj and Corinne G. Dempsey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 11–37.

46. Joanne Punzo Waghorne, Diaspora of the Gods: Modern Hindu Temples in an Urban Middle-Class World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 170.

47. See discussion in the conclusion, pp. 243–245.

48. Telegraph, 18 June 2004, Metro section, p. 17.

49. Bartamān, 27 Oct. 1995, p. 3.

8. Controversies and the Goddess

1. I am grateful to members of the Conference on Religion in South India, held at Mount Holyoke College in June 2001, who gave me excellent feedback on an earlier draft of this essay.

2. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 Oct. 1966, p. 1.

3. Sunday Times of India, 24 Sept. 2006, p. 2.

4. See Devīpurāṇokta Durgāpūjā Paddhatī, collected and edited by Jagadīścandra Tarkatīrtha (Calcutta: Saṁskṛt Pustak Bhāṇḍār, 1388), p. 30, and Madhu Khanna, “The Ritual Capsule of Durgā Pūjā: An Ecological Perspective,” in Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water, ed. Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), appendix, p. 493. This washing, or snān, of the nabapatrikā is one of the elements of Durgā Pūjā that makes it a great festival (mahotsab) and distinguishes it from lesser Pūjās like those devoted to Jagaddhātrī and Kālī, which do not have ritual bathing.

5. These three points were made, respectively, by Śiśir Mallik, a store-owner in a Marwari neighborhood of Kolkata (interview, 30 Sept. 2000); artist Maṇṭu Caudhurī, in an interview with Pratidin (14 Jan. 2001, p. 6); and Minati Kar (interview, 3 Oct. 2000).

6. The situation was certainly different in the early nineteenth century. See Sumanta Banerjee, Under the Raj: Prostitution in Colonial Bengal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).

7. I heard this from several scions of old family Pūjās and found it also in the most authoritative English translation of the Pūjā ritual prescriptions: Pratap Chandra Ghosha, Durga Puja, with Notes and Illustrations (Calcutta: Hindoo Patriot Press, 1871), n. 40.

8. I am grateful to Jonathan Riceman for suggesting that I look at this scene. Email comm., 10 Aug. 2005.

9. The image was placed at the Muhammad Ali Park pandal. The artist, Aloke Sen, called his creation “Māyer Kānnā,” or the Grief of the Mother, and said in an interview that those who destroy the environment (who commit sacrifice of trees and wildlife) are worse than Durgā’s traditional demons.

10. The information to follow comes from an interview I was fortunate to have with Mr. Datta on 13 Dec. 2000; it is supplemented by subsequent newspaper coverage.

11. Times of India, 17 Oct. 2000, p. 4.

12. Pratidin, 24 Oct. 2000, p. 2.

13. See India Today, 30 Oct. 2000, p. 75; and Pratidin, 30 Sept. 2000, p. 1.

14. New York Times International, 3 Sept. 2000, p. 3.

15. Purnima Toolsidass, interview, 22 Dec. 2000. See n. 19 below.

16. The birds in question are egrets and Asian open-billed storks, which are under the Protected Species category. Times of India, 26 Sept. 2006, “Calcutta Times” section, p. 1.

17. Times of India, 13 Sept. 2008, p. 3.

18. Beauty Without Cruelty was founded in England in 1959 and in India in 1974. Their headquarters is in Pune, and they have had great success in the South, especially in Mysore. Compassionate Crusaders, an activist group lobbying for animal welfare, was started in 1993 by Debāśis Cakrabartī, who joined his organization to the Humane Society and to the Animal Welfare Board of India. People for Animals was founded in 1994 by Menaka Gandhi; the Kolkata chapter is headed by Purnima Toolsidass.

19. In chronological order of legal enactment, see the Animals and Bird Sacrifices Prohibition Acts of Andhra Pradesh (1950), Tamilnadu (1950), Karnataka (1959, amended in 1963 and 1975), Pondicherry (1965), Kerala (1968), Gujarat (1972), and Rajasthan (1975).

20. 1 Oct. 2000.

21. See Kṛṣṇānanda Āgambāgīś, Tantrasāra, ed. Rasikmohan Caṭṭopādhyāy and translated into Bengali by Candrakumār Tarkālañkar (Calcutta: Nababhārat, 1982), pp. 682–694, and Raghunāth Tarkabāgīś Bhaṭṭācārya, Āgamatattvavilāsa, translated into Bengali by Pañcānan Śāstri (Calcutta: Nababhārat, 1985), pp. 238–250.

22. See, for Durgā: Durgāpūjā Paddhati, derived from the Kālikā Purāṇa and prepared by Jagadīścandra Tarkatīrtha (Calcutta: Saṁskṛta Pustak Bhāṇḍār, 1982), pp. xxxvi–xlii; Durgāpūjā Paddhati, derived from the Devī Purāṇa and prepared by Jagadīścandra Tarkatīrtha (Calcutta: Saṁskṛta Pustak Bhāṇḍār, 1981), pp. 66–70; and Śrī Śrī Durgāpūjā Paddhati, derived from the Bṛhannandikeśvara Purāṇa and prepared by Paṇḍit Śyāmācaraṇ Bhaṭṭācārya (Calcutta: Beṇīmādhab Śīl’s Library, n.d.), pp. 77–91; and, for Kālī, Śrī Śrī Kālīpūjā Paddhati, prepared by Paṇḍit Śyāmācaraṇ Sāṁkhyatīrtha (Calcutta: Rājendra Library, n.d.), pp. 72–84.

23. All of the Kālī ritual manuals available for sale in the bazaars have lengthy sections on the prescriptions for goat and buffalo sacrifice. There are five steps to the rite: the sanctification of the animal; the dedication of the cleaver that will decapitate it; the consecration of the y-shaped stake that will hold the animal’s neck in place; the actual beheading; and the offering of the animal’s flesh, blood, and head to the Goddess. Though Brahman priests do all the dedicatory parts of the ritual, the decapitation is performed only by members of the blacksmith, or Kāmār, caste. See Sāṁkhyatīrtha, Śrī Śrī Kālīpūjā Paddhati, pp. 72–83.

24. See his History of Dharmaśāstra, 6 vols., 2nd ed. (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1974), vol. V, pt. 1, pp. 164–168.

25. Bhaṭṭācārya, Śrī Śrī Durgāpūjā Paddhati, p. 78.

26. Amarnāth Dawn, interview, 5 Oct. 2000.

27. Tarkatīrtha, Durgāpūjā Paddhati, p. 12. For a similar recounting of Rāma’s role in the justification for bali, see Mahābhāgavata Purāṇa 45.31–33 and 46.18–33, as cited in Patricia Dold, “Kālī the Terrific and Her Tests: The Śākta Devotionalism of the Mahābhāgavata Purāṇa,” in Encountering Kālī: At the Margins, at the Center, in the West, ed. Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 56 n. 10.

28. For accounts of these and other, similar temples, see Charles Joseph, “Topographical Survey of the River Hooghly from Bandel to Garden Reach,” Calcutta Review 3, no. 5 (Jan.–June 1848): 428–462; S. C. Mitra, “On the Recent Instance of Human Sacrifice,” Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay 15, no. 5, p. 481, as cited in Aparna Bhattacharya, Religious Movements of Bengal (1800–1850) (Patna: Aparna Bhattacharya, 1981), p. 98 n. 42; Śibśaṅkar Bhāratī, “Kalkātār Kālī-kathā,” Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 6 Nov. 1999, pp. 37–39; Sukumār Nāth, “Naihatir Ḍākāte Kālī,” Bartamān, 29 Oct. 2000, p. 10; and Benay Ghoṣ, Paścim Baṅga Saṁskṛti, 4 vols. (Calcutta: Prakāś Bhaban, 1978), 2:58–59.

29. As cited in Sudhirkumar Mitra, Huglī Jelār Itihās o Baṅgasamāj, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Calcutta: Mitrāṇi Prakāśan, 1953), 1:248.

30. Friend of India, 9 Feb. 1837, p. 41.

31. See, in order of reference, Mitra, Huglī Jelār Itihās o Baṅgasamāj 1:249; Statesman, 4 Oct. 1927, p. 8; Times of India, 21 Dec. 1999, p. 9; Ājkāl, 22 Nov. 2000, p. 6; Reuters, 9 Feb. 2001 (accessed through www.abcnews.go.com); and BBC News for 12 April 2006 (accessed through www.news.bbc.co.uk) and for 16 April 2010 (accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8624269.stm).

32. The “goddess” in question is usually Kālī and less often Durgā. An engraving from 1917 of “Human Sacrifice to the goddess Juguddhatree,” included in the Missionary Papers of the Church Missionary Society, may indicate that Jagaddhātrī had more of a share in these blood offerings in prior decades than is true today. See Brian K. Pennington, Was Hinduism Invented? Briton, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 97, fig. 3.7.

33. Felix Padel, The Sacrifice of Human Being: British Rule and the Konds of Orissa (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).

34. Story by Sumali Moitra, from the Independent, 28 July 2001. Accessed at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china (4 August 2001).

35. On the Kuchbihar family and its customs, see Ājkāl, 3 Oct. 1995, p. 3; D. N. Majumdar, “The Custom of Burning Human Effigies,” Man in India 3 (1923): 97–103; and Mohit Rāy, Rūpe Rūpe Durgā (Calcutta: Adhī Pāl, 1985), p. 33.

36. This custom is observed by Howrah’s Bhaṭṭācārya family of Kailash Banerjee Lane, and, in Kolkata, the Sen family in Kumartuli, the Datta family of Hatkhola, and the Madan Mohan Datta family in Nimtola. For śatrubali, see references in Devī Purāṇa 22.16 and Mahābhāgavata Purāṇa 45.33, and Rajendra Chanda Hazra, Studies in the Upapurāṇas, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1963), 1:80–85, 220, 229, 271, 278.

37. There is evidence for this transition from human to animal sacrifice in regions outside Bengal, as well. For South India, see the older work of the Rev. Henry Whitehead, who recorded in Telegu-speaking villages the practice of burying live pigs and hook-swinging live sheep, instead of humans; he believed that human sacrifices were discontinued either when the victim escaped or when someone said the wrong thing (The Village Gods of South India [London: Oxford University Press, 1916], pp. 58–60 and 90–92). For an overview of this material, see Brenda E. F. Beck, section 7, “Animal Sacrifices and Other Festivals Offerings,” in her “The Goddess and the Demon: A Local South Indian Festival and Its Wider Context,” Puruṣārtha 5 (1981): 112–116. Researchers in Orissa make similar claims: Edgar Thurston writes of Khond tribesmen using buffalo instead of human sacrifice at the turn of the twentieth century (Ethnographic Notes in Southern India [Madras: Government Press, 1906], p. 517), and even though he states that the last recorded human sacrifice was in 1852, there have been reports as late as 1981 of the same; see the documentary film, “The Khonds of Baphlai Mali,” produced by John Shepherd for the BBC (2000). Even the name of the festival in which buffalos are now offered, Meriah, used to be the generic name for human sacrifice.

38. See Suchitra Samanta, “The Self-Animal and Divine Digestion: Goat Sacrifice to the Goddess Kālī in Bengal,” Journal of Asian Studies 53.3 (1994): 782.

39. This is the Gobarjana Kālī Temple, in Ratuya Thana, Maldah, said to have been built by Debī Caudhurāṇī, the housewife-turned-dacoit immortalized by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, who vowed to erect a temple if she was successful in her fight against the British. At Kālī Pūjā time in 1996 5,000 goats and 10,000 pigeons were sacrificed within thirty hours. In 1998, because of the floods in the district, only 3,000 goats and 3,000 pigeons were immolated, but in 2000 the numbers were the same as in 1996. “The blood of the balis flows into the river, and the severed heads lie about the village” (Ājkāl, 28 Oct. 2000, p. 6).

40. One of the worst stories to surface in the news in 2000 was about the starvation and beating of captive owls at Kālī Pūjā time; it is believed that a suffering owl, Lakṣmī’s vehicle, will tell the future in a human voice. Bartamān, 27 Oct. 2000, p. 5.

41. Hindustan Times, 30 July 2008, p. 5.

42. Telegraph, 11 Nov. 2004, p. 22.

43. Telegraph, weekend section, 26 Sept. 1998, p. 1.

44. Mr. Priya Gopāl Hājrā, scion of the Rāṇī Rāsmaṇi house in central Calcutta (interview, 16 Sept. 2000).

45. Interview, 17 Sept. 2000.

46. See chapter 6, nn. 34 and 58.

47. The Sābarṇa Rāy Caudhurīs apparently began sacrificing white goats (as a symbol of white skin) during Durgā Pūjā, 1917. After Independence, this practice was discontinued, but black goats are still sacrificed.

48. Quoted in Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 1 Oct. 2000, p. 18.

49. Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 4 Oct. 1922, p. 2.

50. Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 5 Nov. 1945, p. 5.

51. Sumathi Ramaswamy, “Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India,” Journal of Asian Studies 67.3 (Aug. 2008): 843.

52. Aditi Sen (interview, 11 Oct. 1991) and Sanatkumār Mitra (interview, 6 Dec. 2000) reflect what is popularly written about sacrifice in Bengal—namely, that it is patronized mainly by lower-caste people. See Augustus Somerville, Crime and Religious Beliefs in India, 2nd ed. (1929; Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co., 1966), pp. 140–141.

53. Interviews: Minati Kar, 2 Oct. 2000; Pradīp Pāl, 27 Oct. 1998; and Rītā Rāy, 1 Dec. 2000.

54. In this connection one thinks of the trouble Gandhi had in garnering support in Bengal, and of the success of the lionized, more militant Subhas Chandra Bose.

55. Interview, 21 Sept. 2000.

56. See Indira Goswami, The Man from Chinnamasta, trans. Prashant Goswami (New Delhi: Katha, 2006).

57. Mr. Asit Mukherjee devotes himself particularly to the issue of municipal slaughter houses. In Kolkata there are only four legal slaughter houses, at Tangra, Chitpur, Halsibagan, and Lansdowne. This means that it is not legal to kill animals anywhere else, though every small meat shop (dokān) does so. Most of these, he says, are run by Muslims. In November and December 1997, Mr. Mukherjee wrote letters of protest, which bore partial fruit: the courts ruled—in effect admitting that they could not enforce the law—that no meat shop could openly slaughter or display their meat. But even this, bemoans Mr. Mukherjee, “no one heeds” (keu māne nā). Interview, 19 Nov. 2000. It is noteworthy that for the sake of communal harmony Muslims are forbidden by law to slaughter cows at Bak’r-Id (see Supreme Court Judgment on Cow Slaughter in West Bengal—Civic Appeal no. 6790 of 1983). A second, 1994 civil appeal to overturn this law was rejected by the courts on the grounds that cow killing, in particular, is not essential to religious identity.

58. Times of India, 17 Oct. 2006, p. 12.

59. Spoken by a man in eastern Orissa about his local deity Pañcubarāhī (Statesman, 7 Oct. 2000, p. 2).

60. This was said to have occurred in Jangipur Mahakumir Gadaipur village; see Śibśaṅkar Bhāratī, “Durgāpūjo Jelāy Jelāy,” Bartamān Rabibār, 8 Oct. 2000, p. 11; and Roy, Rūpe Rūpe Durgā, pp. 15–17.

61. Interviews, 29 Sept. 2000 and 10 Oct. 1991.

62. See Bengalee, 5 Oct. 1924, pp. 6–8, and Bipin Chandra Pal, Memories of My Life and Times (Calcutta: Bipinchandra Pal Institute, 1973), pp. 100–102.

63. Telegraph, 25 Oct. 2000, p. 27.

64. Indian Express, 30 July 2008, p. 2.

65. Most of the temples associated with the Rāmakṛṣṇa Mission, for example, have prohibited animal sacrifice. The first Rāmakṛṣṇa Mission Durgā Pūjā was celebrated, with the offering of animal meat, at the newly established Belur Maṭh in 1901. But the killing so upset Śāradādebī and others that it was decided to discontinue the practice thereafter. In addition to evidence provided by the several states that have banned animal sacrifice in temple precincts, and for individual case studies of slowly vegetarianized goddesses, see: Richard L. Brubaker’s analysis of the sanitizing of Tamil goddesses in general (“The Ambivalent Mistress: A Study of South Indian Village Goddesses and Their Religious Meaning” [Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1978]); Eveline Meyer’s study of Aṅkāḷaparamēcuvari (Aṅkāḷaparamēc uvari: A Goddess of Tamilnadu, Her Myths and Cult [Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1986]); Kathleen Erndl’s work on the Vaiṣṇo Devī cult in the Panjab Hills (Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993]); William Sax’s book on the Uttarkhand region (Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage [New York: Oxford University Press, 1991]); and David Pocock’s older work on central Gujarat (Mind, Body, and Wealth: A Study of Belief and Ritual in an Indian Village [Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973]).

66. See chapter 6, n. 58. Jan E. M. Houbens also traces this desire to exculpate the worshiper to Vedic ritual prescriptions: “You do not really die here, you are not hurt; you are going to the gods along paths easy to traverse, where those go who have acted well, not the evildoers” (Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 3.7.7.14). He also cites a similar mantra said before killing the horse in the aśvamedha ceremony (Ṛg Veda 1.162.21). See his “To Kill or Not to Kill the Sacrificial Animal (yajña-paśu)? Arguments and Perspectives in Brahmanical Ethical Philosophy,” in Violence Denied: Violence, Non-Violence, and the Rationalization of Violence in South Asian Cultural History, ed. Jan E. M. Houbens and Karel R. Van Kooij (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 105–183.

67. Letter to the editor, Pratidin, 11 Oct. 1998, p. 4.

68. Pratidin, 3 Oct. 2000, p. 4.

69. The front slogan from Excalibur, the Official Newsletter of People for Animals. The fact that the Hindu gods have animal mounts, or vāhanas, is said to be an example of the divine love for wildlife (ibid., p. 2).

70. As Mr. Asit Mukherjee phrased it on 19 Nov. 2000, “I am not an atheist, but I tell Kālī that I won’t go to her or worship her as long as she allows this sort of practice. She is not being a proper mother.” Placards held during the protest vigil at Kālīghāṭ on 26 Oct. 2000 read, “Does the compassionate mother want the blood of a child?”

71. For an example of this interpretation, see Sir John Woodroffe’s commentary on the nineteenth verse of the “Karpūrādi Stotram,” in Hymns to the Goddess and Hymn to Kālī (Madras: Ganesh and Co., 1913), p. 329.

72. From “Man tomār ei bhram gelo nā,” as translated in Rachel Fell McDermott, Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kālī and Umā from Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), poem 99.

73. See the Calcutta Municipal Corporation Act, sections 303, 338, 428(b), 490, and 501, as well as the West Bengal Animal Slaughter Control Act 22 (1950 and amended in 1979).

74. Interview, 30 Sept. 2000.

75. See Sanjukta Gupta, “The Domestication of a Goddess: Caraṇa-tīrtha Kālīghāṭ, the Mahāpīṭha of Kālī,” in Encountering Kālī: At the Margins, at the Center, in the West, ed. Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 60–79; and Pratidin, 20 Oct. 2000, p. 12.

76. Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 1 Oct. 2006, p. 14.

77. Interviews, 22 Sept. and 26 Oct. 2000.

78. Interview with Mr. Maṇimohan Rāy Caudhurī, Behala, 13 Sept. 2000.

79. Even in states with tough anti-sacrifice laws, “official” proscriptions are not totally effective against the practice. As early as the late nineteenth century, Gustav Oppert cautioned that the lack of sacrifices in temple contexts says nothing about what goes on at home before the domestic deity (On the Original Inhabitants of Bharatavarṣa or India [1893; New York: Arno Press, 1978], p. 477), and both Craddock and Babb report, for the modern period in Tamilnadu and Rajasthan, respectively, that animal, especially buffalo, sacrifice has simply been pushed “into the closet”; Norma Elaine Craddock, “Anthills, Split Mothers, and Sacrifice: Conceptions of Female Power in the Mariyamman Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1994), p. 167, and Lawrence Alan Babb (pers. comm., 17 June 2001). See also Babb, “Mirrored Warriors: On the Cultural Identity of Rajasthani Traders,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 3.1 (April 1999): esp. pp. 19–20.

80. Much of the material we have on blood sacrifice in the South Indian context indicates that the deities concerned are local gods and goddesses who are largely worshiped by lower castes. See Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, p. 339, and Whitehead, The Village Gods of South India, pp. 18–19, 89, 94–95, 102–103. For more modern sources, consult Brubaker, “The Ambivalent Mistress”; Craddock, “Anthills, Split Mothers, and Sacrifice”; and Isabelle Nabokov, Religion Against the Self: An Ethnology of Tamil Rituals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

81. J. C. Heesterman makes the same point even for sacrifice in the Vedic period; see “Vedic Sacrifice and Transcendence,” in his The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 81–94.

82. Different cartoons on the front page of the newspaper Pratidin, for 18 Oct. 1999 and 6 Oct. 2000, show two goats talking to each other. One, being led away to the stake, says to the other, “Jump about as much as you like; tomorrow it’s your turn.”

83. See both Statesman, 7 Dec. 1999, p. 4, and Pratidin, 8 Dec. 1999, p. 2.

84. Pratidin, 23 April 2000, p. 5.

85. “The witness stand—wood for burning bodies—Oh Death, you are preferable to this./ Shyambazar, black night, a chopping block, a goat given for sacrifice./ Blood is flowing—blood is laughing—a rose despoiled in the mud of blood—/ A flower garden—a blind alley, an escapee—certified by the government stamp.” Pūrbā Mukhopādhyāy, “Śāsti” (“Punishment”), published in Deś 67, no. 24 (30 Sept. 2000): 19. This poem, dedicated to Candrā, builds upon the characters and situation of a story by Rabindranath Tagore called “Śāsti,” or “Punishment,” in which an eighteen-year-old girl named Candrā, falsely accused by her husband of committing a murder, is sentenced to hang at the gallows. Too proud to defend herself and preferring death to life with a man who does not value her, she takes the stand at court and admits her guilt, thus sealing her fate. By the mention in the second line of Shyambazar, a densely populated neighborhood in northern Kolkata, Mukhopādhyāy intends to jar her readers into realizing that such injustices are still occurring in the city today: like goats offered at Kālī temples in the dead of night with no hope of escape, innocent, flower-like girls are raped and killed, their perpetrators getting off without punishment, since they have official and even police connections. The escapee can also be interpreted as the condemned girl, who, through death, is released from the injustices of her circumstances. By Kolkata municipal laws all goats must be certified suitable for slaughter; in this case, society has wrongly stamped Candrā and those she symbolizes as fit for abuse and death. Phulbagan, lit. “a flower garden,” is an area of northern Kolkata where a little girl was raped and killed in 1999. See Rabindranath Tagore, “Śāsti,” in Galpaguccha (Calcutta: Biśvabhāratī Granthanbibhāg, 1969), pp. 182–190. Translated by William Radice as “Punishment,” in Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1994), pp. 125–133.

86. Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice” (1899), translated by W. D. Halls as Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).

87. An overview of sacrificial theories proposed over the past century is too ambitious to be treated in this short chapter. For good summaries, see Christopher J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 83–105; Luc de Heusch, Sacrifice in Africa: A Structuralist Approach, trans. Linda O’Brien and Alice Morton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); Nabokov, Religion Against the Self; and Valerio Valeri, Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

88. This idea of debt fits well with the Vedic concept of debts, “which, in Brahmanism, governs not only men’s individual lives, but also the whole organization of the world, and especially sacrifice. From his birth, man is a debt for which death is the creditor” (from Charles Malamoud, “Terminer le sacrifice: Remarques sur les honoraires rituels dans le Brahmanisme,” in Madeleine Biardeau and Charles Malamoud, Le sacrifice dans l’Inde ancienne [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1976], p. 194, quoted in de Heusch, Sacrifice in Africa, p. 193).

89. According to Maurice Bloch, one of the key elements of sacrifice is the equation of the self with the victim, who represents one’s problems, one’s animality (Prey Into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience [Henry Lewis Morgan Lectures 1984] [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], pp. 35–36). Luc de Heusch agrees: “One constant practice pervades the sacrificial field: the possibility of substituting an animal for a man” (Sacrifice in Africa, p. 15).

90. De Heusch, Sacrifice in Africa, p. 202.

91. See René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).

92. Bell makes this point succinctly in the excerpt from her work, “Constructing Ritual,” in Readings in Ritual Studies, ed. Ronald L. Grimes (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), pp. 21–33; see her more sustained treatment in Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Geertz’s classic example of a ritual expressive of disquieting destructiveness is his “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 412–453.

93. Nabokov, Religion Against the Self, pp. 11–12.

94. Ibid., p. 178.

95. The sense of harmony achieved from cooking a feast according to socially acceptable culinary rules, and then from sharing it with the community, resonates with de Heusch’s notion of sacrifice as expressing order through food; Sacrifice in Africa, pp. 17–23.

96. Walter Burkert too notes the hesitation before a ritualized killing, as well as typical disclaimers of responsibility. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 16, 37–41, 81–82.

97. Hugh B. Urban, The Power of Tantra: Religion, Sexuality, and the Politics of South Asian Studies (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010). He references Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1978), and Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (New York: Pantheon, 1980); Gilles Deleuze, “Désir et plaisir,” Magazine littéraire 325 (Oct. 1994), pp. 59–65; and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

98. The Village Gods of South India, p. 44.

99. Burkert, Homo Necans, p. 2. Also from p. 2: “The worshipper experiences the god most powerfully not just in pious conduct or in prayer, songs, and dance, but in the deadly blow of the axe, the gush of blood.”

100. Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 22 Oct. 2001, p. 10.

101. Sunday Statesman, “Impressions” insert, 31 Oct. 1999, p. 2.

9. Devī in the Diaspora

1. I am grateful to members of the Religion Seminar at the University of Pennsylvania on 4 Feb. 2004, who gave valuable feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.

2. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 13 Oct. 1985, p. 9.

3. Prema Kurien, “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu: Indian Americans Take Their Place at the Multicultural Table,” in Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration, ed. R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 42–43. See also Steven Vertovec, The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns (London: Routledge, 2000). Good overview chapters on the history of South Asian immigration in general include Martin Baumann, “A Diachronic View of Diaspora, the Significance of Religion, and Hindu Trinidadians,” in Diaspora, Identity, and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, ed. Waltrand Kokot, Khachig Tölölyan, and Carolin Alfonso (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 170–188; Roger Daniels, “The Indian Diaspora in the United States,” in Migration: The Asian Experience, ed. Judith Brown and Rosemary Foot (Oxford: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 83–103; Karen Isaksen Leonard, “Early South Asian Immigrants, 1900–1947,” in The South Asian Americans (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1997), pp. 39–65; Johanna Lessinger, “Indian Immigrants in the United States: The Emergence of a Transnational Population,” in Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora, ed. Bhikshu Parekh, Huhapal Singh, and Steven Vertovec (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 165–182; and Anantanand Rambachan, “Global Hinduism: The Hindu Diaspora,” in Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual, Culture, and Practice, ed. Robin Rinehart (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2004), pp. 390–400.

4. From Prasanta K. Basu, “Trends in the Growth of Bengali Musical Enterprises in Toronto During 1955–1984: An Overview,” in Bengali Immigrants: A Community in Transition, ed. Joseph T. O’Connell and Ritendra K. Ray (Toronto: Rabindranath Tagore Lectureship Foundation, 1985), pp. 9–10.

5. Pratapaditya Pal comments that when he first came to the United States in the mid-1960s, there were no Durgā Pūjās anywhere. See “Durga Puja in South California,” Statesman, Festival booklet, 1991, p. 63. The oldest Pūjā association in Germany also dates from this decade: in Berlin, from 1975.

6. See description of artist Amarnath Ghosh, in Somshankar Bandyopadhyay, “Shola Durga Idols Getting Ready for Export,” Times of India, 25 Sept. 2000, p. 2. Artisans fortunate enough to acquire an overseas following can make a lot of money; one śolā Jagaddhātrī image, only 3.5 feet, was sent to New York in October 2000 to the cost of Rs. 50,000 (Times of India, 19 Oct. 2000, p. 5). A West Bengali community in Schaumberg, outside Chicago, had a new image designed in Kumartuli but cast in Italy out of plastic so that it would be permanent (Clinton B. Seely, pers. comm., 6 April 2003.)

7. Stated by Dr. Mrs. Anima Bhattacharya in a questionnaire filled out on 5 April 2003.

8. The Bangladeshi Hindu Mandir, in Queens, New York, contains permanent, old-style images of Durgā, Jagaddhātrī, and Kālī from Kolkata. The same is true, for Durgā, of the Jersey City Durga Puja and the New York Puja Association. Sweet bluish Kālīs may be seen at the New York Puja Association and the East Coast Durga Puja Association. Not all organizers want the traditional tableau, however. The Durgā belonging to the Bengali Association of Greater Chicago is large, humanized, with a woman’s face and a realistic demon and lion. Says artist Amarnath Ghosh of the export market to which he caters, “Earlier, there were requests for traditional images. But in the past few years, some customers have been asking for a more modern, womanly face of the goddess” (quoted by Bandyopadhyay, “Shola Durga Idols Getting Ready for Export,” p. 2).

9. Prior to the 2003 Durgā Pūjā celebrations, the organizers of the Garden State Puja Committee (Jersey City) bought a new mūrti from Kolkata for $2,192. In the same year their neighbors, the New Jersey Durga Puja Association, or Kallol (Somerset), paid $7,000 for theirs.

10. Most of the Pūjās that I have attended or noticed advertised have collapsed the five-day festival into two: Ṣaṣṭī, Saptamī, and Aṣṭamī are celebrated on the first day, and Nabamī and Daśamī on the second. Some committee, however, proudly proclaim that they do the Pūjā “properly” by observing the full five-day sequence, and on the correct tithis. See n. 20 below.

11. The most elaborate Pūjā I have yet seen occurs under the auspices of the Garden State Cultural Association, held at the Plainfield High School. Women engage in the traditional farewell rituals of baraṇ, when they offer the Goddess sweets, betel leaf, and vermillion, as well as the playful ritual of sindūr- or rang-khelā, when they smear each other’s faces with red powder.

12. Some Pūjā associations or permanent temples, such as the Washington Kālī Bāḍī, fly in priests for important occasions; such opportunities are considered plums by Indian Brahmans. See Dwaipayan G. Dastidar, “Part-Time Purohits Make a Quick Buck at Ma’s Expense,” Times of India, 29 Sept. 2000, p. 2. However, in general American Pūjās are served by locally available Brahmans, whose number is growing, due to immigration. Mr. Abhas Bhattacharya, the priest of the Jersey City Durga Puja, originally hails from the Kalighat area of Kolkata. Here, he works both as an engineer and as a registered Hindu priest for the Jersey City area.

13. The controversial nature of Kālī’s bloodlust is exemplified by the contradictory answers I received from different organizers of the New York Puja Association on the occasion of Kālī Pūjā on 2 Nov. 2002. Two men at the reception area explicitly told me that because Kālī likes blood she must be offered meat, while another man within the auditorium adamantly affirmed that in this Pūjā there was “no meat!”

14. Examples include the State Bank of India, Air India, Bangladesh Biman, the Indian Tourist Promotion Office, Money Dart, Western Union, and Volvo.

15. In 2002 the East Coast Durga Puja Association charged $100 to sit up near the stage in the Gujrati Samaj in Queens, New York, to hear the Bollywood singer Abhijit perform. In 1997 they brought Amrik Singh Arora, who sang Śyāmā-saṅgīt, for which he has become very popular in Kolkata.

16. These tend to be local people of eminence; particularly popular are Bangladeshi ambassadors.

17. See Pal, “Durga Puja in South California,” p. 64.

18. Interview with Dr. Dwijen Bhattacharjya, 19 Oct. 2002, regarding the formation of what became the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir.

19. The first Pūjā of the fledgling Bangladeshi group was held in the Corpus Christi Church, Queens, New York, in 1990. But by 1991, due to leadership disputes, there were two rival groups, the Bangladesh Puja Samiti and the Bangladesh Puja Samity. It is the former, original group that managed to build the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir, a permanent Durgā Temple in Queens that opened in 1998.

20. Some permanent temples, such as the Kālī Temple in Toronto and the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir in New York, insist on observing the correct tithis. After all, observes Pratapaditya Pal, the scriptures say that a Pūjā not performed on the correct tithi is not efficacious. Do the gods like waiting for the weekends? See Pal, “Durga Puja in South California,” p. 64.

21. This is not a Bengali example; the practice was initiated by Gujaratis celebrating Navarātrī in New Jersey in 1990. See Diana L. Eck, “Negotiating Hindu Identities in America,” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States, ed. Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells, and Raymond Brady Williams (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), p. 232.

22. Sometimes the food offered to the deities and then to the devotees is an American-Bengali mix. At the BAPS Swamy Narayan Mandir in Brunswick, Ohio, ārati and bhajans are followed by dinner. “Unlike India, here the gods accept anything as offering—chole, rice sabji, pakoras, sweets. Anything that does not have onion or garlic in it,” says Narhari Patel, coordinator of the temple. “Don’t be surprised if you see a bar of chocolate as prasad, or a Muslim offering Diwali prayers in Swamy Narayan Mandir. The festival is Indian, after all” (Kaumudi Marathe, North American Special, “Celebrating the Diwali Spirit,” India Today [1 Nov. 1999], p. 4). On 4 Oct. 2008, I noted that the Garden State Cultural Association, which holds its Pūjā at the Plainfield High School, New Jersey, served vegetarian “chicken fingers,” “hot dogs,” and french fries for the Americanized Bengali children.

23. Ghoṣāl sang at the Garden State Puja Committee, at the Golden Door Charter School, on 4 Oct. 2003, and Gangopādhyāy was featured at the Garden State Cultural Association, in the Plainfield High School, on 5 Oct. 2003.

24. Interview with T. Richard Blurton, 25 Sept. 2006, London.

25. According to the 2001 Census for Bangladesh, Hindus constitute only 9.2 percent of the population.

26. Both statements were written by Praṇabendu Kumār Cakrabartī, the editor. See Prācī (2002), p. 3, and Prācī (2003), p. 4, respectively.

27. See “Open Letter” to Dr. Debabrata Dutta by Dilip Nath, director for communications and public relations, Bangladesh Hindu Mandir, October 2002.

28. This tendency to revert to the language of the host country is demonstrated in other Western countries as well. Aśok Sengupta, in an article in Ānandamelā, 4 Oct. 2000, pp. 13–17, describes a Kālī Pūjā in Brazil, with signs and publications in Portuguese, and a souvenir patrikā printed in German for a veteran Pūjā association centered in Hamburg, Germany.

29. The 2002 New York Puja Association booklet, on p, 2, in English, opens by asking Durga “to bless our beloved America and all of us with prosperity and peace,” and one of the later essays, by a Bengali-American teenager, is called “Why I love America” (p. 46). The East Coast Durga Puja Association, also West Bengali, prints in its booklet, Durga Puja and Dushera, a letter of thanks from the American Red Cross for the $1,000 donation it had made in December 2001. The West Bengali groups, therefore, appear to feel more tied into and proud of their life in the United States.

30. Said Rana Ghosh, of the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir, “West Bengalis are more organized, but we have more niṣṭhā” (12 Oct. 2002). And Dwijen Bhattacharjya, a Bangladeshi Hindu present at the cultural show of the New York Puja Association that same evening, said to me in a scandalized fashion, commenting on the fact that one of the songs had included references to women’s bras, “these people have no niṣṭhā!”

31. Said Abhas Bhattacharya, the priest of the Jersey City Durga Puja, on 13 Oct. 2002, “We do [the Pūjā] with more precision than elsewhere.” And on 2 Nov. 2002, a couple attending the Kālī Pūjā celebration at the smaller of the two New York West Bengali groups, the New York Puja Association, commented that while theirs was smaller than the rival organization, the East Coast Durga Puja Association, it is also “more homey.”

32. Interview, 1 July 2006.

33. This temple is blessed by but not formally affiliated with the Ādyāpīṭh Kālī Temple in northern Kolkata. It was inaugurated in 2002. I visited the temple for the first time on 14 Nov. 2004.

34. Pal, “Durga Puja in South California,” p. 63.

35. Chicago’s Sri Ramakrishna Universal Temple, inaugurated in September 2008, includes a full Kālī Pūjā ritual in its festival calendar. By contrast, Swami Tathagatananda of the Westside Vedanta Center, New York City, privately reads the Caṇḍī, performs the ārati, and then offers flowers and songs. Then, on the Sunday closest to the proper day, selected close devotees are invited to come upstairs to his private shrine to offer flowers to his image of the Goddess. There is no public Kālī Pūjā.

36. This overseas branch of the Sangha was formed in 1995. In 2006 they erected their own temple, the one in Franklin Township, New Jersey, and have hired a resident priest. At Kālī Pūjā, their main event of the year, they rent a school auditorium in Somerset. Interestingly, they do not do Durgā Pūjā at all, but substitute instead Jagaddhātrī Pūjā, which they host in their temple. For the past several years, monks Subrata Bhāi and Murāl Bhāi from Kolkata’s Ādyāpīth Temple have come to New Jersey to conduct both Pūjās, which they do in a clearly heartfelt manner.

37. See www.kalimandir.org. In the summer of 2008 they constructed a new temple room for Mā; further expansion is planned.

38. Some sample comparative costs for Durgā and Kālī Pūjās, for 2002: $21,000 vs. $7,200 (New York Puja Association); and $30,000 vs. $10,000 (East Coast Durga Puja Association). In 2003 the latter organization kept Durgā Pūjā expenses at around $30,000 but increased the lavishness of its Kālī Pūjā by spending $21,500. No matter how humble the celebration, the cultural program is always the most expensive, followed by the hall rental and then the food. The image usually costs nothing, since it is reused from the previous year, and the priest’s fees are relatively minimal.

39. The temple priest always does the worship of the Goddess with a picture of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa right in front, between himself and Durgā; devotees entering the temple routinely ejaculate, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama!”; Kṛṣṇa kīrtan plays in the background at most occasions; and the temple devotees place special emphasis on Vaiṣṇava holidays, even Ratha Yātrā.

40. Of course, as Steven Vertovec reminds us, it is a mistake to view India as “the ideal culture, the fountainhead, the yardstick,” as if it were an unchanging archetype; Vertovec, The Hindu Diaspora, p. 2. K. K. A. Venkatachari wholeheartedly agrees: Hinduism has always been a tradition of change and adaptation. The authors of the dharma-śāstras disagreed on points, the gṛhyasūtras allowed for regional differences in the performance of rituals, new rituals have been Vedicized to look older, and texts have always been less rich than the actually practiced rituals they describe. “[Adaptation] is not a new process that should be attacked as dangerous; indeed, it is essential to the vitality of any religion.” See his chapter, “Transmission and Transformation of Rituals,” in Modern Transmissions of Hindu Traditions in India and Abroad, ed. Raymond Brady Williams (Chambersburg, Penn.: Anima, 1992), p. 190.

41. Gurharpal Singh, “Introduction,” in Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora, ed. Bhiskhu Parekh, Guhapal Singh, and Steven Vertovic (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 3–4. A similar approach is taken by Steven Vertovec in The Hindu Diaspora, pp. 146–153.

42. Kurien, “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu,” p. 58.

43. See Raymond Brady Williams, “Introduction: A Sacred Thread,” in A Sacred Thread: Modern Transmissions of Hindu Traditions in India and Abroad, ed. Raymond Brady Williams (Chambersburg, Penn.: Anima, 1992), p. 5.

44. Interview, 14 Nov. 2004.

45. See Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 1 Oct. 2006, p. 13.

46. Subhendu Mukherjee for the Statesman, 2 Oct. 1987, p. 13.

47. First stanza of Anon., “Āmrā yārā prabāse āchi tāder janye (For those of us who live abroad),” Garden State Puja Association, 2006, p. 22.

48. “Nostalgic Notes from Toronto,” Hindustan Times, Puja Parikrama section, 8 Oct. 2004, p. 3.

49. It is noteworthy about the perceived place of Bengali Hinduism in the rest of India that one of the oldest such “virtual pūjā” sites on the Web, www.eprarthana.com, features no Bengali temples, cities, or deities of any sampradāya whatsoever.

50. As of January 2009, this had not been updated since 2007, and did not appear to be very easy to use. See Hindustan Times Live, Kolkata, 1 Sept. 2008, p. 2.

51. Milton Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilizations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 71. This idea of the reflexivity of ritual in diasporic settings is also enunciated by Paul Younger, Playing Host to Deity: Festival Religion in the South Indian Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 163; and Sunita S. Mukhti, Doing the Desi Thing: Performing Indianness in New York City (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 45–51.

52. Milton Gordon (in Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins [New York: Oxford University Press, 1964], as referred to in Raymond Brady Williams, Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan: New Threads in the American Tapestry [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], pp. 33–34) outlines three functional characteristics of ethnic groups: they serve psychologically as a source of group identity; they provide patterned networks of groups and institutions, which allows an individual to define his relation to the whole through life-cycle rites; and they refract the national cultural patterns of behavior and values through the prism of a narrower cultural heritage.

53. This point is made by Vasudha Narayanan in “Hinduism in America,” in Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions, ed. Gary Laderman and Luis Leon, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 1:107.

54. Suhas Ghosh, interview, Oct. 5, 2003.

55. Fred Clothey, “Rituals and Reinterpretation: South Indians in Southeast Asia,” in A Sacred Thread, ed. Williams, pp. 127–135. Steven Vertovec is uncomfortable with this concept if it rests upon an assumption of rational choice: not all compromises are consciously “chosen.” He prefers to utilize Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, a “nonconscious set of dispositions and classificatory schemes that people gain through experience, providing a repertoire for situationally competent action, improvisation, and the generation of new practices”; see The Hindu Diaspora, pp. 156–159.

56. Younger, Playing Host to Deity, p. 159.

57. In another example, in a November 2003 New Jersey rendition of Jagaddhātrī Pūjā by the devotees of the Dakshineswar Ramkrishna Sangha Adyapeath, “Americabāsi ki jay!” was added to the traditional set of exclamations of victory for deities at the end of the ritual.

58. According to Raymond Brady Williams, more than 90 percent of the Hindu organizations in the United States are founded and led by lay persons who have little training in and often limited knowledge of Hinduism. Many rely on guidance from teachers in India. See his Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan, p. 55.

59. See “Sacred Threads of Several Textures: Strategies of Adaptation in the United States,” in A Sacred Thread, ed. idem, pp. 231–244.

60. Kurien, “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu,” p. 64.

61. For a representative statement of this opinion, see Williams, Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan, pp. 287–288.

62. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p. 64.

63. See Kurien, “Becoming American by Becoming Hindu,” p. 46.

64. For instance, the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir uses its Pūjā souvenir booklet to advertise a Bengali Sunday School, in which participating children and teenagers learn Bengali, Hindu religion, and Bengali songs and dances. Note that most non–temple-based Durgā Pūjā societies exist only to sponsor the Pūjās, and do not hold regular meetings throughout the year.

Conclusion

1. Durgā Pūjā is asserted to be “the most important festival of West Bengal” by the writer of the “West Bengal” section of Fairs and Festivals of India, chief editor M. P. Bezbaruah; compiler Krishna Gopal; photographer Phal S. Girota, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2003), V:168.

2. Ralph W. Nicholas, “The Bengali Calendar and the Hindu Religious Year in Bengal,” in Fruits of Worship: Practical Religion in Bengal (New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2003), pp. 13–27.

3. Stanley A. Freed and Ruth S. Freed, Hindu Festivals in a North Indian Village (Washington, D.C.: American Museum of Natural History, 1998).

4. Hanumān is not a Bengali deity; Hanumān temples in Bengal are built by Bihari migrants; see Philip Lutgendorf, Hanuman’s Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 250. We have evidence for non-Bengali Rāmlīlā performances, at least in the gardens of the wealthy, from the mid-nineteenth century in Calcutta; see Clinton B. Seely, The Slaying of Meghanada: A Ramayana from Colonial Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 51. My newspaper survey, however, turns up public enactments of Rāma’s victory over Rāvaṇa by North Indians on the Calcutta maidan only from the early 1970s. The Amrita Bazar Patrika, 8 Oct. 1973, p. 1, gives a notice of Panjabis celebrating Rāmlīlā in the city for the second year in a row. The effigy for the first year is photographed in Ānanda Bājār Patrikā, 18 Oct. 1972, p. 5.

5. The image was at Chetla Park Cultural Club. Telegraph, 13 Feb. 2005, Metro section, p. 1.

6. Four Thursdays are especially important: those in the months of Caitra, Bhadra, Pauṣ, and Āśvin. In Caitra, the rainy season, the rice is sown; in Bhadra it is growing; in Pauṣ it is brought inside and tied in a pot; and in Āśvin it is threshed.

7. Said artisan Babu Pal, in 2000, evidently pleased about the increased business, “More and more nuclear families are now performing Lakshmi pujas.” He estimated that eight to ten thousand earthen plate Lakṣmī images were being made in Kumartuli each year. Times of India, 12 Oct. 2000, p. 2.

8. “Ghare ghare Lakṣmīr āsan-pātā”: “Lakṣmī’s seats are spread out in every house.”

9. “Mukher madhye beś ekṭā Lakṣmī-Śrī ācche”: “There is something very graceful about her face.” “Lakṣmī-chāḍā lok” means someone whom fortune has abandoned. “Lakṣmī chele! Lakṣmī meye!”: “Good boy! Good girl!” I am grateful to Keshab Chandra Sarkar, who taught me these expressions on 12 Oct. 2000.

10. Times of India, 18 Nov. 2000, “Calcutta Times” section, p. 1.

11. The yearly cycle of vows to Ṣaṣṭī and of festivals for what he calls the “village goddesses of calamities” (Śītalā and Manasā) may be found in Nicholas, “The Bengali Calendar,” diagrams 6 and 7, pp. 24–25.

12. I am grateful to Jayanta Roy, who participated in and photographed the entire festival for me in Shalkia on 14 Feb. 2001 and 27 Feb. 2002.

13. Pratap Chandra Ghosha, Durga Puja, with Notes and Illustrations (Calcutta: Hindoo Patriot Press, 1871), p. xxiv of end matter, n. 13.

14. Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 208.

15. Ralph W. Nicholas, Rites of Spring: Gājan in Village Bengal (New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2008), especially chap. 1, “Gājan and Bengali Rituals,” pp. 1–36.

16. The village in question is Kurmun. See Sunday Times of India, 13 April 2008, p. 2.

17. M. N. Roy, “Disintegration of a Priestly Family,” in The Radical Humanist 18, no. 6–7 (7 Feb. 1954), pp. 73–74.

18. Statesman, 5 Oct. 1919, p. 19.

19. This point is made by Hillary Peter Rodrigues, Ritual Worship of the Great Goddess: The Liturgy of the Durgā Pūjā with Interpretations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 253.

20. Bartamān, 1 Oct. 1995, Pūjā enclosure, p. 9.

21. Quoted by Ghosha, Durga Puja, with Notes and Illustrations, p. 15.

22. This was the manner in which the Bengali bhakta and saint Rāmakṛṣṇa viewed Durgā; see Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna, The Great Master, trans. Swami Jagadananda, 2 vols., 6th ed. (Mylapore: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1984), p. 123.

23. Quoted from “Durga Puja in the Villages of Old,” Statesman, 6 Sept. 1952, Puja Supplement, pp. 1 and 4.

24. Spoken by Sudhir Pāl; see the “Calcutta Times” section of the Times of India, 23 Oct. 2001, p. 1.

Appendix. An Overview of the Press in Bengal up to 1947

1. Good overviews of the Indian press include Smarajit Chakraborti, The Bengali Press (1818–1868): A Study in the Growth of Public Opinion (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1976); Mrinal Kanti Chanda, History of the English Press in Bengal: 1780 to 1857 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1987); and Rangaswami Parthasarathy, Journalism in India: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Bangalore: Sterling Publishers, 1989).

2. Chanda, History of the English Press in Bengal, p. xxi.