In pictures: Art and dissent by Bengal’s outspoken Durga Puja pandals in a changed political climate

A Durga Puja pandal is a specially created festival installation that houses an idol and presents decorations, imagery and a theme. It matters because the pandal is not only a religious setting. It is also a public exhibition visited during West Bengal’s most popular festival. That gives its creators an audience beyond a gallery or meeting hall.

Themes can tell stories about identity, work, migration, history or environmental damage. Last year, Chaltabagan Sarbojanin used “Ami Banglay Bolchi” to trace Bengali language history. Ramgarh Raipur Club presented migrant workers who could not return home. These choices turned shared celebration into public commentary.

This year, committees continued using pandals differently. Some adopted religious and nationalist narratives. Others used ponds, rivers, oil, coal and miners to discuss power indirectly. The format allows organisers to communicate through visual symbols, myth and emotion. Visitors must connect those images to current political realities themselves.

The article presents Durga Puja as West Bengal’s most popular festival. That status gives it unusual public reach. Celebrations take place through many neighbourhood committees and pandals, especially across Kolkata. Visitors move between these installations, seeing idols, decorations and themed artistic displays. The festival therefore operates as both a religious event and a large civic experience.

The examples show this breadth. Chaltabagan Sarbojanin, Aswininagar Bandhumahal, Ramgarh Raipur Club, Yuba Sangha in Telipukur and several other committees developed distinct themes. Their subjects ranged from Bengali language and migrant workers to ponds, rivers, oil, coal and mining labour. These themes reached people in a setting already central to public life.

The article does not provide attendance figures or a statewide count of pandals. It does show that the festival is influential enough for a chief minister to issue instructions to organisers. Its importance comes from this combination of popularity, visibility and shared public attention.

Last year, around Durga Puja, public anxiety grew in West Bengal after reports that Bengali-speaking people were being expelled across the border. They were accused of being Bangladeshi. This made language and identity feel politically dangerous. People also feared for their citizenship rights and their right to vote as the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls approached.

Pandal themes responded directly to that atmosphere. Chaltabagan Sarbojanin presented “Ami Banglay Bolchi”, or “I Am Speaking Bengali”, and traced the history of Bengali. Aswininagar Bandhumahal explored Bengali journeys through changing political and riverine landscapes. Ramgarh Raipur Club told stories of migrant workers unable to return home for the festival.

These were not merely decorative choices. They asserted Bengali identity while confronting exclusion. The pandals became artistic interventions in a climate where language could invite suspicion. Their public form allowed committees to address citizenship, belonging and displacement through history and human stories.

In 2026, the Bharatiya Janata Party won the state elections and a new chief minister took office. Before Durga Puja, Suvendhu Adhikari instructed organisers to ensure that idols, pandal themes and decorations respected religious traditions and cultural heritage. He prohibited practices said to cause offense or harm to those traditions.

The warning changed the setting in which committees worked. It signalled that festival content could be judged against official expectations. Yet visits across Kolkata showed that dissent had not disappeared. Some pandals embraced overtly religious and nationalist narratives, while others addressed power through natural resources, labour and environmental change.

The result was not a simple retreat from politics. Political ideas became more varied and, often, less direct. Ponds, rivers, oil and coal carried meanings that visitors could interpret. This indirect approach may preserve room for criticism, but it also makes responsibility less explicit. The article asks what happens when political messages must travel through symbols.

This year’s pandals used familiar materials and stories to approach political questions. Environmental themes focused attention on pollution, urbanisation, commercialisation and changing landscapes. Religious imagery added another layer. The central mechanism was indirect representation: visitors encountered an ecological or mythological scene, then inferred the economic and political forces behind it.

Yuba Sangha’s “Ek Pukur Bhalobasha” portrayed a neighbourhood pond threatened by pollution, urbanisation and commercialisation. Nalin Sarkar Street’s “Jalalipi” explored the possible death of the Ganga, invoking Maa Ganga and recalling “Ram Teri Ganga Maili”. Behala Club connected oil to Samudra Manthan and international power. Thakurpukur SB Park’s “Colliery” centred miners and extraction.

Together, these themes made power visible without always naming current actors. They raised questions about resource use, labour, environmental destruction and corruption. Yet “Colliery” also showed the limits of this method. Blaming a previous government can become partisan accounting if broader structures sustaining extraction remain unexamined.

Environmental or religious imagery provides a language that may be less confrontational than direct political accusation. A polluted river, threatened pond or sacred myth can invite reflection without naming a government, company or official. This matters when organisers face pressure to respect approved religious and cultural boundaries. Visitors can recognise the political issue while the artwork remains open to interpretation.

Yuba Sangha’s pond theme shows both sides. It highlights pollution, urbanisation and commercialisation, creating an affectionate portrait of a disappearing water body. But the harder questions concern who encroached on it, which development decisions reduced it, and who profited. If the problem is presented mainly as collective littering, responsibility becomes everyone’s and therefore nobody’s.

“Jalalipi” similarly links reverence for Maa Ganga with pollution, while “Tel” connects myth to oil and global power. These forms make criticism possible, but they can sanitise conflict. They may conceal decisions, beneficiaries and systems unless audiences look beyond the symbol to the underlying political economy.

The article presents Durga Puja as a meeting point between public celebration, artistic invention and political speech. Because pandals are visible to large numbers of visitors, they can shape how people understand identity, labour, migration and environmental change. Their themes make social conflict part of a shared festival experience rather than limiting it to formal politics.

When direct criticism becomes difficult, artists can use history, myth and nature as intermediaries. Bengali language history addressed exclusion. A pond suggested contested development. Maa Ganga connected pollution with religious responsibility. Oil and coal made extraction, global power and miners visible. These images do not erase politics; they translate it into forms that may be harder to prohibit or dismiss.

But indirectness has costs. Symbols can soften urgent questions or turn structural responsibility into general blame. Criticism may also become partisan if it targets only a previous government. The festival therefore reveals a compromise: public art preserves space for dissent, while political control can shape how clearly that dissent speaks.