Art becomes outrage: Kolkata festival confronts crime against female doctor

On 9 August, the Indian city of Kolkata was shaken when a trainee doctor was found raped and murdered at one of its oldest hospitals. Though an arrest was swiftly made, accusations of a cover-up and evidence-tampering quickly surfaced, fuelling public outrage. Since then, daily protests, human chains and candlelight vigils have filled Kolkata’s streets. Now, the city’s largest festival unfolds amid some of the city’s most fervent protests in years.

Kolkata is celebrating its biggest annual festival – Durga Puja, when the ten-armed Goddess Durga is said to visit her earthly home, her entire family in tow.

At Durga Puja pandals – or temporary temples – the goddess stands in the middle astride a lion, flanked by her children – elephant-headed Ganesha, warrior god Kartikeya on his peacock, the goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati – while the defeated buffalo demon lies at her feet, symbolising the triumph of good over evil.

These days, it’s not just the gods that draw the crowds. The pandals have become quite elaborate. Some recreate landmarks like Dubai’s Burj Khalifa or the mangrove forests of Sundarbans. Others are installations with social messaging – conserve water, pray for world peace, save handicrafts.

That led to Durga Puja being billed as one of the biggest street art festivals in the world. Arts organisation Mass Art has been putting together previews of selected Pujas, especially so that foreign guests can get a sense, says its secretary, Dhrubajyoti Bose Suvo, of how a “city transforms into a public gallery”.

But this year, the largest street art event of the city has come face to face with the biggest street protests Kolkata has seen in years. Some of the idols are different, and even the artwork on the walls reflects anguish and protest with figures of women and animals rendered in stark red, black and white.

The protests broke out after the 31-year-old doctor was found brutally killed at RG Kar Medical College on the night of 9 August. After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had fallen asleep in a seminar room due to the lack of a designated rest area. Her half-naked body, bearing severe injuries, was discovered the next morning on the podium.

“Of course there is an effect [of the incident] on us,” says visual artist Sanatan Dinda. “I do not paint inside an ivory tower. I speak of the society around me in my work.”

Upset over the incident, Dinda resigned from a government-run arts organisation. He says, “Now I am on the streets with everyone else. Now I have no fear.”

In September, Dinda and the clay artists who built the Durga images in the historic artisan neighbourhood of Kumartuli led a protest march demanding justice for the woman they called “our Durga”.

Dinda says he has made “improvisations” to the Durga images he was working on this year.

At one in Bagha Jatin in south Kolkata, his mother Goddess looks more fierce than maternal. The lion she normally rides is springing out of her chest. Each of her ten arms holds a spear to slay evil. The artwork on the walls reflects anguish and protest with figures of naked women and animals rendered in stark red, black and white.

Art as protest is not new.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Defacement, commemorating the 1983 police killing of a man allegedly writing graffiti in the New York subway, found renewed relevance during the Black Lives Matter movement. Public artists like Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, Diego Rivera, and Banksy – whose stencils span walls from Kyiv to the West Bank – have long used art to deliver political messages.

Durga Puja art is public art, but it’s also central to a religious festival that fuels the state’s economy. A British Council report valued Durga Puja’s 2019 economic impact at over $4.5bn, nearly 3% of West Bengal state’s GDP.

With so much at stake, neighbourhood clubs organising pujas have to tread warily. They cannot alienate thousands of ordinary citizens looking for a good time, not a sermon. They get financial grants from the government that’s facing the protests. They have to work with the police on permits and traffic control.

A few have opted to forego taking money from the government.

One puja in Kankurgachi, in the northeastern side of the city, chose Lajja (Shame) as its theme after the protests erupted. Its Durga is covering her eyes, her lion keeping vigil over the body of a woman wrapped in a white sheet. The organiser is openly affiliated with the state’s opposition party.

Close by, another puja creates a tableau of the bereaved family, the mother sitting on the bed, the father at a sewing machine, their daughter’s picture in doctor’s scrubs on the wall. Other organisers are more circumspect, not wanting to wade into political waters.

“But we still want to make a point, especially as a women-led women-run club,” says Mousumi Dutta, president of the Arjunpur Amra Sabai Club.

Their theme this year is Discrimination. The artist uses the Constitution of India and its articles promising equality as the backdrop to the goddess while local actors enact the gap between the promise of the Constitution and reality through street theatre.

The theme had been decided earlier but the tragedy gave it a different urgency. “We have decided to not call this year’s Durga Puja a festival,” says Dutta. “We are calling it a pledge instead. A pledge to create a world where we won’t have to keep coming out on to the streets to demand justice.”

The demand for justice for a woman resonates with Durga Puja anyway, a festival built around a goddess vanquishing evil. One puja had already chosen women power as its theme which now matches the zeitgeist.

Durga puja theme designers say they were already neck-deep in work when the protests erupted.

“Perhaps if it had happened earlier it would have been different. By August I was committed to the organisers and to some 450 people working with me,” says Susanta Shibani Pal. But he says the issue “subconsciously” crept into the art.

His installation Biheen (The Void) for the Tala Prattoy puja, covers 35,000 sq ft, immersing the viewer into what he calls a “black hole”.

His Durga has no body, her life force represented by a flickering candle, much like the candles that are part of the protests. “A viewer might read this as my protest. I might call it coincidence. I started this work before RG Kar happened,” he said.

While some are bringing the mood of protest into their Durga Puja art, others are bringing protest art to their Durga Puja. Chandreyee Chatterjee’s family has been celebrating Durga Puja at their home in Kolkata for 16 years. Chatterjee also participated in many of the street protests.

She admits she was in no mood to celebrate this year. They will still have a Durga Puja but with a difference. “We will do what the rituals require, nothing more. Anything that comes under the heading of celebration, like dancing, is being done away with this year.”

She and her friends have also had an artistic little badge made. It shows a hand grasping a flaming torch. Underneath in Bengali are the words “We want justice.”

“I will be giving it to friends and family who come to our Puja,” says Chatterjee. “We want to remind people we have a long long way to go.”