Internet has been abuzz about the ‘Trumpashur’ (if we can call it that), a Mahishashur imagined as Donald Trump. This is not a joke or a hook. In Behrampore, the Khagra Shmashanghat Durga Puja Committee sculpted Mahishasura with unmistakably Trump-like features after his 50% tariff announcement and his stance on H-1B visas. It gets wilder, another committee called Sadhak Narendra Smriti Sangha used Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’ resemblance as mahishashur. If you thought Bengal’s Pujo quirk is just restricted to clay, sindoor and non-veg bhog, think again. When it comes to Pujo, Bengal’s imagination knows no bounds.
From Clay to Commentary: The Political Pandals of Bengal
This isn’t the first time a Bengal Durga Puja idol has made headlines. Innovative durga pandal have been getting wilder every year.
Perhaps, part of it is because of the cultural tolerance for playful imagination: where the same event might spark outrage elsewhere, in Bengal it often becomes part of a collective carnival.
The stranger the idea, the bigger the crowd, people will queue for hours just to have a look at the idol that made it to the news. I grew up in Kolkata and have lost count of the pandals I visited simply because the imagination on show was too good to miss.
In 2020, when the world was in grasp of COVID-19, Bengalis found a way to represent this current event through their imagination. The spiky, green-eyed “Coronoasura” was a way to represent the collective demon of COVID-19. Durga Maa was reimagined as a warrior leading the fight against COVID-19 in a way imagining the divine blessing. Similarly, during the COVID crisis, migration was a huge social issue, and many died owing to lack of system and empathy. Barisha Club then created a migrant Durga maa figure carrying children and baggage like the many who walked on foot to reach their villages from different cities.
In Dumdum Park Bharat Chakra pandal, the issue of farmer’s protest in UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri was raised. Farmers were killed during protest in Lakhimpur Kheri leading to an outrage on social media.
The scene was reimagined in the pandal, where a giant replica of a car with the lines “Motorgari uray dhulo, pishe more chashigulo (The motor vehicle raises dust, the farmers are crushed/ground to death.") representing the incident.
In the year 2020, North Dinajpur's Islampur Adarsha Sangha paid tribute to frontline workers by dressing up the Durga cohort in essential workers uniforms. The pandal had Durga maa as a doctor, Goddess Saraswati as a journalist, Lord Kartik as sanitation worker, Goddess Lakshmi as a nurse and Lord Ganesha as a police officer. There are numerous such depictions across the history of ‘sarbojonin’ (for all) Durga Pujo in West Bengal.
The imagination has spread to other parts of the country; however, it hasn’t been received well. For example, a 2025 Pujo themed on Vatican City in Ranchi had to be modified after VHP protests. An image of Christ was replaced with Lord Krishna after VHP claimed it hurt religious sentiments of Hindus.
A quick search on the internet, however, would give you many whacky depictions that could itself be turned into a thesis of sociology to study the social community behaviour of a festival like Durga Pujo. While Bengal’s Durga Puja has long been a space for dissent, satire, and creative reimagination, a jingoistic tone creeped into the festivities this year. Pandals across the country including high-profile ones like Kolkata’s Santosh Mitra Square and Mumbai’s Shivaji Park adopted the theme of "Operation Sindoor". From visual projections of Prime Minister Modi with vermilion in his hand to Defence Ministry spokespeople featured on display, and entire installations in red light to echo the color of sindoor - subtly aligning with dominant political messaging.
Bengal’s history is steeped in politics from the fire of the freedom struggle to the deep scars of Partition, it’s all woven into the region’s cultural fabric.
In Bengal, everything is political: from a squabble over parking in the neighborhood to heated debates about who gets to bat first in the para playground. Over cups of cha at roadside stalls and in living room addas, ideological sparring is commonplace.
That’s precisely why political imagination so easily finds space in Bengal’s festivities. With all-day media coverage, long queues and social media enthusiasm, Durga Pujo becomes a carnival in Bengal.
Hilsa Over Halwa: Why Bengal’s Pujo Tastes Different
I have lived in Kolkata, but now I live in Delhi; and I have witnessed, in person, the changes in food tradition during festivities. While I can opt to go to CR Park to get my favorite Bengali delicacies during Pujo, in some of the areas of Delhi, non-vegetarian delicacies are restricted. In April 2025, a fringe group had threatened CR Park market fish seller saying it’s against Hindu traditions to sell fish near the temple.
Unlike North and West India which celebrates Navaratri through abstinence and eats only vegetarian food; Bengal has a tradition of celebration and feasting.
In Bengal, people believe Durga Maa to be the daughter of their land, and they welcome her home by feasting in celebration of her arrival. Community bhogs also include non-vegetarian items. The food pattern also has a lot to do with the Shakti form of devotion and its trace in Bengal.
Fish, which is a regional favorite, is considered a special delicacy in Pujo, especially the much-coveted Hilsa fish. On Nabami, or ninth day, it is mandatory to eat kosha mangsho or mutton curry as part of the last day celebrations before Durga Maa is sent back to her in-laws. The belief of Durga Maa being a daughter makes way for the change in diet and the difference with North Indian celebration.
In a lot of the Goddesses Temples in Eastern part of our country, the regular bhog or offering to Goddess is non-vegetarian, for example, Kalighat in Kolkata or Kamakhya Devi in Assam.
Evolution From Private to Community Ownership – A Carnival for All
Barowari or Sarbojonin pujo as we know today is quite different from how Bengal celebrated Durga pujo back in the days. Durga pujo as a festivity began as a family affair with zamindar and elite household hosting pujo making it a family tradition. Some of these Rajbari/Royal Residencies still follow the tradition and have pujo in their old houses. The family gets together from different parts of the world, and it is a part of the popular imagination too with films like Utsab by Rituporno Ghosh being part of the popular culture of Bengal. The zamindari narrative on pujo has also been explored in a different film by Ghosh called Antarmahal.
The zamindari trend was to show riches and host private feasts during Durga pujo, with the poor villagers getting a chance to see the idol if they are lucky. However, most of the rituals were performed only by the family that hosted the pujo. If the local lore is to be believed, Guptipara in Hooghly is supposed to have hosted one of the earliest barowari pujo. Barowari, if translated, would mean baro meaning twelve and yar meaning friends.
It is believed that it was first celebrated outside the family tradition by twelve friends. Now, the narratives vary on why that happened. Some cite that the zamindar in the area didn’t want villagers to enter their pujo festivity and hence, the locals decided to have their own community pujo. However, these folk histories are only oral and hence, written proof of any of these histories is difficult to trace.
In 19th and 20th century, Kolkata neighborhoods started organizing community pandals. Neighborhood committees and clubs have since been frontrunners in organising these community worship spaces and also reinventing their favorite goddesses in thematic formats. The politics, the culture and the current affairs, all of them collide to form Durga Pujo in Bengal.
Goddesses Don’t Judge
The complexity of Durga Pujo, in its history, in its current imagination and in its community ownership is something to be looked at. A pujo that was reclaimed from being just a family tradition to being a community celebration has to also keep innovating itself with the collective imagination. If imagination can cast a world-leader as an asura and turn a virus into a mythic foe, it can just as well give us a Durga who allows us to eat hilsa and blesses a packed bhog line. And if you’re wondering what’s next - AI Durga Maa who responds to devotees’ questions? It’s not a reality that’s too far-fetched.