Durga Puja as UNESCO Heritage: Kolkata's Living Festival

The festival celebrates the Devi Mahatmya's account of Durga's battle with Mahishasura, the shape-shifting buffalo demon whom no god alone could defeat, so all the gods combined their energies to create the Goddess, arming her with their weapons for the fight. Her victory on Vijayadashami is celebrated as the eternal triumph of good over evil.

In Bengal, the festival is also deeply personal, imagined as Durga's annual visit to her parental home with her children Lakshmi, Saraswati, Ganesha and Kartikeya, before she returns to Kailash with her husband Shiva.

The festival's core days, Shashthi through Dashami, follow a set rhythm: bodhan invokes the goddess into the clay image, Saptami, Ashtami and Navami bring daily puja, anjali and the dramatic Sandhi Puja at the exact junction of Ashtami and Navami, and Dashami closes with sindoor khela and the emotional immersion of the idol.

• Kumartuli's artisans spend months hand-crafting the clay idols each year
• Pran pratishtha rituals are believed to invoke the goddess's living presence into the image
• Dhunuchi dance and dhak drumming mark the festival's most electric moments

UNESCO's citation praised Durga Puja for the way it transcends religion, art, and community, noting how pandal-hopping brings together people of every background in shared celebration, and how the festival supports the livelihoods of artisans, decorators, lighting designers and performers across Bengal. Each year, Kolkata's pandals also become spaces of creative artistry, with themes ranging from mythological to deeply contemporary.

This recognition has strengthened global appreciation for Bengal's devotional and artistic traditions, while devotees themselves continue to experience the festival first and foremost as an intimate encounter with the Mother.

Through the festival, priests and devotees recite verses from the Devi Mahatmya during Chandipath, with Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu Shakti Rupena Samsthita echoing through pandals as a reminder that the Mother resides as strength within every being. Bhog offerings of khichuri, labra, chutney and payesh are prepared and shared freely, often feeding thousands at large community pandals.

This shared meal, offered first to the goddess and then distributed among all present regardless of status, is considered as sacred as the puja itself.

Durga Puja's UNESCO recognition is, in the end, simply a global acknowledgment of what Bengal has always practised, that devotion grows richer when shared, and that art, community and faith can flow from the very same well. Every idol immersed on Dashami carries with it a year's worth of devotion, ready to be renewed the following autumn.

Whether experienced as heritage or as personal faith, Durga Puja remains at its core an act of faith and love, not a transaction.