How London celebrated the Bengali festival of Durga Puja

The beginning of October marked a time for communities to celebrate the most important religious festival in the Bengali calendar.

Susen Sarkar from India in London, writes about his experience of the five-day Autumn festival as a second generation Bengali.

For us it was always Christmas that was the major festival during the year and not an Indian or Hindu one. School life built up to Christmas with special meals and carols, there was a large decorated Christmas tree at home with masses of presents, and Christmas lunch was probably the only time in the year when we all sat down to eat together.

As the numbers of Bengalis in the UK increased there were more Durga Pujas festivals held.

Religion didn’t play that great a part in our parents’ lives. My father had a mini-shrine in his bedroom with icons of various Gods bought from India, a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and a bottle of Ganges water – very holy in the Hindu religion.

Prayers were said very much in the Western manner with the palms together. Apart from some visits to Durga Pujas that was really our only exposure to Hinduism. My first trip to a Hindu temple wasn’t until I was in my early 20s on an extended holiday in India.

We went to a temple in Tarakeswar, about 40 miles from Calcutta, where my father had partially been brought up. The head priest was an old school friend of my father’s and said prayers with us.

I just remember being appalled at the lack of hygiene in the temple but that was redeemed later by probably the best shingaras - Bengali samosas – I have ever had, in the priest’s quarters. By contrast the Hindu temple we visited in Delhi a couple of years ago was very clean and well-kept.

A couple of weeks ago I was researching into London Durga Pujas which is the main Bengali Hindu festival.

A video from London Sharad Utsav was posted online to show their celebration of the Durga Puja festival at Ealing Town Hall.

Amongst Bengalis, Diwali – the Festival of Light – does not feature prominently. A Bengali festival, Kali Puja, generally coincides with Diwali. I don’t think I was aware of Diwali until I was a grown-up.

Perhaps this is another example of the “Bengalis are different” sentiment.

My understanding is that most other Hindu groups from India celebrate their own individual festivals at about the same time as Diwali.

Having been in Calcutta at Diwali I found Bengalis were aware of it but there seemed to be no active mass celebrations. The main hotels did, however, make great efforts with beautiful flower displays and floating candles in swimming pools.

Talking to my cousin in Seattle recently he recounted that when he was resident in London in the late 1960s there were numerous separate pujas and remembered a particular one in Hampstead that he attended.

I found there were at least ten separate Durga Pujas in and around London which I think shows both how important the festival is and the numbers of Bengalis in the UK today.

In Birmingham where I grew up there were at least three separate Durga Puja events and the staging, organisation, and personalities were often very political.

For my parents in particular it was a great time, and in the main a social event. My mother would attend one puja on her own during the day, and then another in the evening with my father.

She would cook large pans of vegetarian food, chickpea curry comes to mind, to serve to worshippers and revellers. As I recall food was a very important part of the festivities.

Rather sadly it seems there are fewer Durga Pujas held in the Midlands than in the past. Perhaps gradually most of my parents’ generation have retired and most of the new first generation arrivals have settled in the South of England.

South London Durga Puja is one of London's Durga Puja's that holds special events every year to mark the Bengali festival.

They have shared a video on YouTube of highlights from their 2008 celebration:

Durga Puja generally takes place over about a week, and most organisations in the UK would rent a church hall or similar facilities.

There would be a huge display on a dais or stage of a papier mache Durga – generally imported from Calcutta - dominating the hall like an altar and a place for offerings.

An uncle on a Puja committee would store the Durga in his garage the rest of the year.

Each day and evening there would be various pujas or religious services followed by lunch and dinner, and sometimes entertainment such as Tagore plays and music.

We as children often attended but we had very little cultural context or education, and the thought of just sitting there while the adults were engaged was not really appealing.

I think most nisei Bengalis disappeared from Durga Pujas during their teenage years perhaps to make a reappearance in their 20s wanting to reconnect with both their culture and local aunts and uncles.

It was only recently that I went again to Durga Puja. We went to events in Kings Cross and Ealing Town Hall. Both were very crowded, and it was very difficult to understand what was going on; perhaps my lack of religious education made it harder.

In addition, we felt most of the attendees were first generation recent arrivals from Bengal. I suppose I was quite surprised at the lack of second generation or nisei like me. Trying to find food, not knowing anyone there and the crowd density made the event difficult to enjoy and I sadly felt rather at sea.

Certainly the Durga Pujas held in the UK have had fresh impetus from new arrivals of Bengali origin, but it is striking that few second generation appear to have an interest in maintaining their parents’ tradition although that might be just be a mix of intermarriage, and greater integration rather than an outright rejection of their parents’ culture.

Susen Sarkar and Sue Jackson blog extensively on India related events and issues and can be followed on Twitter.