Sustaining Spaces of idol-crafting and communities of practice: Seasonality, adaptability, and cultural identities in Kumartuli, Kolkata
Abstract
Kolkata’s Kumartuli neighbourhood remains the centre of idol-crafting for Durga Puja, a Hindu festival that has been nominated for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Iconic clay idols are prepared in Kumartuli for over six months, where festival preparations reach their peak in the monsoon and early autumn. While clay idol-making has been studied extensively as religious art/craft less attention has been paid within material religion to the creation and use of religious space as festival-making, and the type of spatial practices required. Constant negotiations and adaptations are required within cramped spaces to accommodate a large seasonal informal workforce and the multi-layered exchanges despite the failing infrastructure of the unorganized neighbourhood/slum of Kumartuli. To carry out this operation during the festive period within this densely inhabited area the existing physical infrastructure must be appropriated and adapted to insufficient services, place branding and varying degrees of policing. Based on ethnographic fieldnotes, mapping and visual documentation, this paper explores the operations and logistics of idol-making through the narrow lanes. It argues that what makes this an interesting “community of practice” is the dynamic between facilities being stretched to breaking point (and peoples’ grievances) as well as the continuing faith-led consumer demand for clay crafts. That is, scholarly understanding of Durga Puja as a religious practice or Kumartuli as a craft neighbourhood must be located against the complex backdrop of the growing commodification of a cultural craft, as well as how associated caste and other networks have evolved over time to facilitate these practices despite congested and competitive spatial and relational configurations.
Citation: Chakrabarti, Debapriya. “Sustaining Spaces of Idol-crafting and Communities of Practice: Seasonality, Adaptability, and Cultural Identities in Kumartuli, Kolkata” The Jugaad Project, 5 April 2022, www.thejugaadproject.pub/spaces-of-idol-crafting [date of access]
Introduction
The annual Durga Puja, the most awaited social, cultural, and religious festival in Kolkata, involves mass participation from all communities. This festival, associated with the Hindu autumnal celebration of the Mother Goddess, is also celebrated widely in most parts of West Bengal, eastern India and across the Bengali Hindu diaspora around the world. This annual socio-cultural event involves the worship of deity of Durga crafted as iconic clay idols housed in a series of celebratory temporary mega installations, locally known as pandal (marquee, found in India) (Mukherji & Basu, 2015). These unique festive installations for housing the idols, big or small are constructed over time scales of between six months and a few weeks (Chattopadhyay, 2019). During the festival of seven to ten days, huge installations of lights, advertisement boards along the pandals take over the city’s streets (Guha-Thakurta, 2015), which makes the festival a major event symbolising the city of Kolkata.
There have been recent developments in the cultural policy frameworks and simultaneous state-sponsored festivities in West Bengal that made the festival a ‘state flagship event’, leading to the participation of diverse stakeholders, including large corporate houses and media in the public exhibition of Durga Puja (UNESCO, 2019). Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), India's apex body under the Ministry of Culture, has nominated Kolkata's Durga Puja to be included in UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) (Sangeet Natak Akademi, 2019). However, the pending decision due to the pandemic has not dampened the spirits of the revelling Bengali public, who participate in millions to visit and enjoy the festive pandals, decorations and iconic idols (Mukherji & Basu, 2015). Festive celebrations have continued through the pandemic and the British Council reports that Durga Puja economy contributes to about 2.5% of India’s GDP (British Council, 2019).
Most of the iconic idols for Durga Puja are crafted in the historic neighbourhood of Kumartuli. From its roots in traditional idol crafting for religious purposes (Bean, 2011), Durga Puja has traversed into a celebration of intricate design and handcrafted idols of Hindu deities made of clay, straw, bamboo and finished with vibrant colours prepared for the annual celebrations. Idols are immersed in water bodies, mainly the river Hooghly, after worship where the clay, straw and other ritualistic elements like flowers disintegrate. The bamboo and wooden frameworks are then drawn out of the water and mostly recycled for idol crafting the following year. In Kumartuli, in addition to the iconic Durga Puja idols, deities for all Hindu religious festivals are crafted by the caste-based potters’ community known as ‘kumar’ in local Bengali language. The neighbourhood has been the living and working space for kumar families for over a century and remains one of the few surviving historic caste-homogenous neighbourhoods in Kolkata. It must also be highlighted that, this caste-based profession is uniquely associated with Bengal in the Indian subcontinent. Along with the allied crafting practices such as making jewellery and decorations, the neighbourhood in Kumartuli comprises of the community of cultural and religious idol-making practice.
However, this uniqueness of the community is not reflected in the UNESCO ICH nomination. Rather, the emphasis of the nomination is on the political economy of Durga Puja festival and its organisation that includes corporate and media houses with largescale turnovers. Hence, the neighbourhood continues to be marginalised due to its built character and tenure status. The neighbourhood is classified as an informal but a registered slum (Kundu, 2003) or ‘bustee’ like many others in inner-city Kolkata, mainly due to lack of land tenure, infrastructure and services and building typologies. Due to the growing pressure of crafting more idols every year with changing consumer patterns and state-sponsored festivities, the seasonal activities have changed. Operations are carried throughout the year, reaching its peak in autumn with thousands of seasonal migrant workers joining from the rural hinterlands to carry out the mega transactions. However, the neighbourhood stretches beyond its capacity to accommodate these massive activities.
This article discusses the operations in Kumartuli during the peak phase of idol-production and distribution phase in autumn just before Durga Puja. Presenting the findings from an ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Kolkata between August 2017 and May 2018, this article presents the shared spaces of production, the associated infrastructure and how these are pushed to a breaking point to accommodate these practices within the limited space. Through the different sections in the article, the idol-crafting process and the values associated with these are discussed (Section 2). This contextual framing leads to the descriptions of the ecological and environmental conditions, including the precarious nature of production spaces and how these spaces shape craft production while also accommodating the living functions of the large workforce (Section 3). Finally, conclusions are drawn on how this situated practice within urban spaces are part of a larger network of allied practices that includes changing consumer patterns and branding of crafts as new forms of cultural identity (Section 4). In doing so this article critically investigates the growing commodification of a cultural craft and how despite spatial constraints idol-crafting has continued to be a collaborative practice.
The materiality of idol-crafting and associated socio-cultural practices: A methodological insight
The idol is at the centre of Durga puja rituals, which has been historically crafted from bamboo, straw, and clay. Idol-making as a profession has emerged from the potters’ practices with handling clay. The conceptual framework underpinning this research is rooted in practice theory, particularly Shove’s et.al (2012) theorisation of dynamics of social practices. The practice theory framework looks at practices as fundamental entities of social life. The practice theory methodologies (Shove, 2017) establish practice as an ‘entity’ that shapes the life of human and non-human carriers or a ‘performance’, carried out routinely. Practices are constituted of elements which are connected including the tangible ‘materials’, the skills or ‘competencies’ and finally the ‘meanings’ expressed through ideas and aspirations (Shove et al., 2012). These elements form the core of the evolution or transformation of practices; practices emerge, shift, and disappear when connections are made between the three elements (ibid.). This research studies idol-crafting practice as the central theme, that has evolved and shaped by the location and material accessibility of the neighbourhood, skills and competencies of the community, and socio-cultural meanings associated with the craft.
The following sections of the article rely largely on qualitative data collected through an ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Kumartuli between autumn 2017 and summer 2018. With the aim to understand the materiality and meanings associated with idol-crafting, everyday practices and lived experiences of the community involved in the production of idols, a combination of methods was used. These included visual documentation like photography and mapping, semi structured interviews, and participatory visual methods. The collected data has produced a rich mix of visual and ethnographic material to support the analysis of the socio-spatial relations and practices that shape the neighbourhood.
Historically the kumar caste was involved in clay pottery. The materiality of idol-making is generally natural and has remained unchanged for centuries; traditional rituals are followed during the production (Chakrabarti, 2022). However, technology related to idol crafting has evolved over centuries. A structural framework of bamboo and wood is made to underpin the stability of the massive clay idols. Then the shape of the idol is sculpted first from straw, bound with jute strings. Thereafter several layers of different varieties of clay are applied systematically to sculpt and achieve the desired shape of the idol. Rice glue and water is mixed proportionately to make a firmer mixture with the clay for strength and durability. Final layers of white chalky clay are applied on the reinforced clay sculptures before painting with colours and finishing with decorative garments and jewellery (See Figure 1).
Figure 1: Photographs of different stages of idol crafting: (a) straw binding phase, (b) after clay application, (c) after first layer of colour, (d) finished idol in pandal (Kolkata, 2017, Photo by author).
Kumartuli is situated along the river Hooghly on the northern edge of Kolkata, with good rail and road linkages. All the materials for idol crafting have been traditionally sourced to Kumartuli through river and road networks. Bamboo is floated in the river from the rural areas and are received at the Kumartuli ghat (waterfront embankment) by local merchants, typically involved in multi-generational family enterprises. Bamboos are picked by holding at both ends by two men from the water and carried to the embankments by placing each end on shoulders; a practice that has remained unchanged for centuries. Seasonal migrant workers, mainly from landless lower caste communities from rural areas of Bengal are part of the workforce, who are employed by merchants and kumars to carry out bamboo transporting and other allied semi-skilled works. During the preparation season of the idol, between the months of June to September, boats loaded with clay reaches the riverfront ghats of Kumartuli (Agnihotri, 2017). The kumars buy the clay directly from the merchant and carry it through the inner alleyways to be stored in their workshop or on the streets. Clay bought by the kumars must be carefully prepared for application by removing stones, or other larger particles. Clay and straw being a major part of an idol, disintegrate into the river water with time after the immersion of the idol and is connected to ‘vegetation, cultivation… with a capacity to sustain life’ (Bean, 2011). An idol for worship is therefore, according to the Hindu tradition, meant to be immersed in water after the ritual; a fired clay idol (terracotta) or a more lasting material is not a sustainable worship alternative.
Contemporary renditions of Durga idols for the annual festival deviate from traditional forms and iconography. In the current competitive practice of ‘themed puja’(1), idol-crafting is based on the clients’ needs and demands; traditional clay idols are constantly being replaced by contemporary artistic renditions (Guha-Thakurta, 2015). Clientele comprises of a wide range of consumers including individual households seeking smaller sized idols (between five to eight feet high) to high budget neighbourhood sponsored festival committees who order larger idols (up to 20 to 25 feet high) and are driven by the growing economy of tourism with media and corporate involvement. However, the kumars say that it is essential to have a clay idol for worship. Even if a client commissions an idol for exhibition and competitions, for the purpose of worship and performing rituals a mini clay idol will still be prepared in addition. This change in the consumption pattern and the neoliberal tourism pressures associated with state sponsored Durga Puja festivities and immersion rallies (Mitra, 2017) are impacting the growing crisis in the Kumartuli neighbourhood. Due to the growing market of idols for Durga puja and other local Hindu festivals, the kumars hire additional seasonal migrant workers for carrying out the work. Accommodating for the growing migrant workforce to keep up with the demand, practices in Kumartuli are stretched both in terms of seasonality and space, often productive functions taking over public spaces, such as streets while the physical infrastructure reaches a breaking point.
Spaces of idol-crafting: Seasonal surges and infrastructural crises
In this section, descriptions are focussed on how idol-crafting practices operate in the neighbourhood during the peak season and how it shapes the spaces. Durga Puja in Kolkata begins usually in late September or early October each year. The busiest time of Kumartuli is undoubtedly the preceding days of this annual festival. To understand the processes and spatiality of operations, I selected this peak time to begin my ethnographic fieldwork (Marcus, 1995; Hannerz, 2003). Late monsoon rains often hinder the idol-preparation in Kumartuli. The observant media never fails to report the preparation phase before the annual festivals to the anticipating Bengali population worldwide. I had been closely following these reports on local newspapers to prepare myself for the fieldwork. I think the most intriguing part of this operation is that despite the crowd and muddy streets, enthusiasm of the general public to visit and witness the distribution of idols is becoming a norm as a result of continued promotion of the festivities by the local government and media. This makes crowd management tricky with absolute disregard for the already stressed infrastructure and services despite the presence of police. The local government, the police and road traffic control coordinate with the idol-makers’ cooperative to manage the crowd by selecting routes and following one-way traffic control to avoid congestion. The local community adapts their everyday lives accordingly. In the following paragraphs, I present a mix of field notes and some analytical components to develop a descriptive socio-spatial overview of the neighbourhood.
The year 2017 had seen an exceptionally rainy monsoon just prior to the beginning of the autumnal festivities which was disruptive for the crafting phase of idols. The rain in the preceding three to four months before autumn is when the major idol-crafting happens. During my visit I found that the streets of Kumartuli were still wet, and the clay from the idol preparation made them muddy. There were puddles of muddy water in the numerous potholes and the constant movement of vans, bicycles and motorbikes caused the mud to splatter on pedestrians causing chaos and messiness. As I walked, I had to be careful always; to stop and give way to the speeding motorbikes to avoid the splashes of muddy water on myself. As a woman who has grown up in Kolkata, I was no stranger to muddy potholes, or speeding motorbikes or crowded streets during the Durga Puja; but what was different here were the focussed actions of the people that concentrated entirely on the idol-making cluster. The crowd was in a rush; everyone seemed to be busy with their respective pursuits, yet the gathering was slow-moving.
Figure 2: Photograph of finished idol being pulled by seasonal migrant workers on the streets of Kumartuli (Kolkata, 2017, Photo by author).
The fifteen-minute walk felt a lot longer; and by the time I entered the narrower street leading to the centre of Kumartuli, I was caught up behind a large group of people. Around thirty to forty men (and boys, mostly teenagers), all laughing and chattering, had come to collect a pre-ordered idol for their neighbourhood-sponsored festival or their para (neighbourhood) – puja(2). They were one of the many groups of people who had come to Kumartuli for business. All such para - puja committees came in trucks or lorries accompanied by predominantly young people and few middle-aged men of their neighbourhoods; the older men were negotiating last-minute prices with the idol-makers and porters while the more youthful crowd made excited cheering noises. They danced to loud festive (often Bollywood) music and collectively chanted festive notes: bolo Du(r)gga Mai ki… JOY… (Shout out for the Mother Durga… VICTORY). The atmosphere was filled with noise: of laughter, of singing and chanting, of drumrolls from the festive drummers, and more so of anticipation for the biggest event of the year (Figure 2).
It was fascinating to witness the massive crowd of people who had come to collect their pre-ordered idols through the narrow, dingy alleys, sometimes muddy and unpaved, yet wide enough to transport idols twice or thrice the height of an average human. There was an order in the chaos: an order monitored by the presence of the police. The Kolkata Traffic Police were controlling the vehicular traffic and the pedestrian movements to move the considerable crowd smoothly. There were police to control the traffic on the main roads, as well as in the inner alleys to monitor movement. Idols must be pulled from the workshops to the trucks on hand-drawn carts by groups of porters. Trucks cannot enter the eight feet or so wide inner streets of Kumartuli. These are parked on the wider road, the Rabindra Sarani, better and formerly known as, Chitpur Road; open only to idol-carrying and privately owned vehicles during this time of the year.
The observations I made on the streets were mostly on activities, transactions, and conversations around bargaining for services provided by the groups of seasonal migrants, mostly porters, festive drummers with the members of community-sponsored pujas. There are several groups of migrants, from rural areas of southern Bengal, coming to Kumartuli for different purposes: seasonal labourers for helping in idol-crafting workshops, porters for pulling idols from workshops to trucks and seasonal drummers. The seasonal workforce are generally historically deprived, poorer caste groups including kumars, who otherwise work as agricultural labourers or face lack of livelihoods in their native villages. While the workers for idol-crafting are hired by kumars and accommodated within workshops, the larger workforce such as porters and drummers are accommodated on the streets in makeshift marquees. There were different groups of people, some were cooking on a portable kerosene stove in a makeshift arrangement while others were walking hastily for a quick dip in the river before eating and a few others were resting at the street corners for a little while before starting off again with renewed strengths to pull the weighty idols. Some groups were running back to the workshops in fear of losing a potential group of customers. The porters carried with them ropes and hand - made carts to pull the idols to the trucks waiting on the main road. Around six porters were pulling one 20-feet high idol of Durga, and there were still hundreds of these to be placed on the trucks. I carefully watched them pull the finely crafted sculptures; the man at the very end chanted a rhythm for the others to synchronise their strength while pulling.
Bean (2011) articulates the idol-crafting communities that ‘congregate in neighbourhoods with ready access to clay and room for storing supplies, as well as studio space and local tolerance for work spilling out into the streets during the festival season.’ (Bean, 2011, pp 610)
This quoted text highlights several aspects of the neighbourhood. Firstly, as presented above the location and networks have enabled the availability of raw materials such as clay, bamboo, and straw. Secondly, the workshop-houses of Kumartuli have historically enabled family-run businesses to co-exist within the same space (Chakrabarti, 2019). Finally, and arguably the most intriguing in this regard is the social cohesion that enables tolerance over the use of public spaces such as streets as extended production spaces. The street in Kumartuli is a spatial, social, and cultural space, both within personal and public domains, characterised by activities with substantial overlapping in different temporal frames. For example, a workshop, whose threshold is on the street, has customers gathering, waiting, and mingling in front. The open workshop shutters are also a portrayal of a busy shopping street or market, which serves as a space for interaction between a passer-by and the kumar in his workshop exhibiting his craft. During the peak preparation phase, often disrupted by the monsoon rain, awnings from workshops extend far on the street, creating a semi-covered space, to facilitate extensive idol-crafting. However, during the distribution phase, the awnings are folded back to make way for the 20 to 30 feet high idols. Also, allied industries such as decorative ornaments and paraphernalia for Hindu rituals are situated in Kumartuli. Along the streets, there are many shops selling these items with fronts opening on to the street and customers are seen haggling and buying from the streets. Hence, the narrow street is not only a means of transporting and distributing the products from Kumartuli, but also spaces of interaction between neighbours, a passing customer who might be impressed by the artistic skills of the kumar, or simply an extended space for production and transactions.
Figure 3: Image of a street, (a) during monsoon, with awnings above the public space, (b) during distribution of idols (Kolkata, 2017, Photo by author).
The streets of Kumartuli are also spaces of multi-sensory experiences. The narrow streets with creative practices using clay, bamboo, straw, and other materials produce smells, visual scenes and sound unique to the neighbourhood. While passing by one might hear hammering noise of nail being fixed on a wooden idol frame, or the sound of straw being cut into small pieces. One might smell the dampness of the clay, often left on street while preparing it for application on the idol. During monsoon, the clay percolates on to the street, leaving them muddy. Later in the season, one might be overwhelmed by the smell of paints or the brilliant visuals of glittering garments being put on the idol. The practices in Kumartuli are very different from an average urban neighbourhood and the sensory experiences are largely governed by the practices of idol-crafting, which makes this place unique. The experiences are also associated with the extra waste produced from the idol-crafting practices, such as clay, straw etc. that are accumulated in the small waste collection bins, inadequate for the purpose and result in unpleasant smell due to infrequent cleaning by the local authorities. These, sometimes unpleasant sensory experiences, and street scenes within an urban space are reasons for continued stigmatisation of the slum neighbourhood in dominant public discourse, also felt in cases of marginalised settlements due to caste, class and religion (See Chatterjee, 2015).
In fact, the complexities of the informal nature of neighbourhood in relation to the precarity and the failing infrastructure, overlooked by the local government remain the reason for continued neglect. While Kumartuli is the largest and oldest of idol-crafting neighbourhood, the growing demands for producing more idols are constantly taking over spaces for living. The precarious rental agreements and land tenure present challenges to building improvements or extensions and are associated with continued displacement of families to provide spaces for the workshops only (Chakrabarti, 2022). In addition, narrow alleys are seldom repaired and resurfaced, and continue to disintegrate due to heavy weights carried on them. These vulnerabilities associated with disjointed physical infrastructure and the growing pressure posed by the consumer demands threatens future of the craft in Kumartuli.
Conclusion
The streets of Kumartuli are spaces of social and cultural production that continue to make and remake spaces for crafting, selling and distribution as well as everyday activities of residents. Also, unique visuals, sounds and smells are generated through the everyday practices of the residents. These multi-sensory experiences are an essential part of constructing meaningful places within cities: what is seemingly unpleasant to a passer-by is of multiple meanings to everyday users. Not only the sound, smell and visual imagery is supporting the construction of these places, but they also lend extra-ordinary meanings to the seemingly ordinary places of practices. Such stigmatisation is not new; but it has been widely discussed in literature that it is important to understand spaces from the perspectives of the users’ lived experiences (Bhan, 2019; Krishna et al., 2014) and the emotional values associated with them (Banks et al., 2020; Lombard, 2013). Kumartuli therefore, while unique, is not an exceptional case of marginalisation and disjointed infrastructure. Rather, it is a result of continued negligence and lack of participatory approaches to policy implementations.
Despite the multisensory experiences of the everyday and the sentiments attached to the streets of Kumartuli, tensions exist due the lack of enforceable and community-driven solutions to degrading infrastructure. Such discussions are often missing from existing publications on Durga Puja crafts and idol-making, which while focusing on the spectacle of religious festivals, marginalizes the need for caste-roles and power inequity as labour that “fills” the gap of poor policies and infrastructure. This article has paid close attention the sensory and material conditions in which work is done as a way to evaluate both how existing adaptations work (or don’t work) and what needs must be prioritised. For instance, road conditions are essential because they play a significant role in procurement and distribution. Typical street scenes show that the roofs or awnings of workshop sheds are extended to combat the messiness of wet clay on monsoon-soaked streets. In this way, marginalised residents of a slum neighbourhood use a making-do mentality to adapt to broken infrastructure and services to continue their livelihoods. Again, an outsider may stigmatise the locals by these visuals of the slum, whereas these are results of negligence and lack of public works by the local authorities.
This article presents views of the spaces of Kumartuli stretched to a breaking point due to the growing pressures of a consumer-driven festival that is constantly being promoted as a state event. In doing so, this article questions the future of the traditional practices associated with idol-crafting in Kumartuli and the wider networks that have evolved in place, the constant adaptations that are required to get by and get on, and the strong place attachment of resident kumar families that have been collaborating to work towards a festival that the city celebrates.
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Endnotes
(1) Exhibitions of idols and pandals as temporary pavilions are often themed on different contemporary issues or buildings.
(2) Most neighbourhoods organise community-sponsored festive installations and rituals for the community.
