All tagged idol

Sustaining Spaces of idol-crafting and communities of practice: Seasonality, adaptability, and cultural identities in Kumartuli, Kolkata

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.

2022 Spring Issue - Craft

How are craft production, techniques and skills interwoven into the space of the “everyday” as culture and identity in South and Southeast Asia? How are different understandings of tradition and indigeneity to be incorporated into such a discussion? Our Spring 2022 issue on Craft explores those questions via communities and cultures in India and Indonesia, featuring peoples’ cosmologies and beliefs in different ways. Lira Anindita Utami’s article on gringsing, a sacred double-ikat textile of Bali, and Debapriya Chakrabarti’s article on the infrastructural impact of Durga Puja idol-making in Kolkata deal with more explicitly religious objects. Lalita Waldia’s article on the woodcarving craft of likhai in Uttarakhand, India, and Amira Rahardiani’s study of bamboo weaving development in Central Java, Indonesia, delve, instead, into the complexities of craft as livelihood and heritage.