In the Name of the Goddess: Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata

AUTHOR : Tapati Guha-Thakurta

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INFORMATION

  • AUTHOR : Tapati Guha-Thakurta
  • HB ISBN : 978-93-84082-46-8
  • Year : 2015
  • Extent : xiv + 390 pp.
  • Discount available on checkout
  • Usually dispatched within 3 to 5 working days.

In the Name of the Goddess

HB
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PB
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INFORMATION

  • AUTHOR – Karan Singh
  • HB ISBN : 5500
  • PB ISBN :
  • POD ISBN :
  • ISBN – 978-93-84082-01-7
  • Year – 2014
  • Extent: 400 + 40 coloured illustrations
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Each year, Kolkata’s Durga Puja scales new heights as the most spectacular and extravagant event in the city’s calendar. From the turn of the twenty-first century, the festival has taken on a particular artistic dispensation that is unique to the contemporary city, demanding a new order of attention and analysis. Based on field-research conducted between 2002 and 2012, this book unravels the anatomy of this newly-configured ‘art’ event, by tracking the new production processes, the mounting trends of publicity and sponsorship as well as the practices of mass spectatorship that make for the transformed visual culture of the festival. This new visual aesthetic, it is argued, has become the most important marker of the rapidly mutating identity of today’s Durga Puja in Kolkata, bringing into the fray new categories of artists and designers, new genres of public art, and new spaces for art production and reception in the city.
The book’s central concern lies in conceptualizing a specifically contemporary and artistic history of the urban festival. In keeping with its title, the book examines the diversity of images and practices – from the consumerist spectacle and the bonanza of awards to the efflorescence of public installations and art and craft productions – that unfurls in this season ‘in the name of the goddess’. While profiling the Durga Pujas as Kolkata’s biggest public art event, the book also addresses the ambivalence of the designations of ‘art’ and ‘artist’ in this eld of production and viewership. One of the main aims of this study has been to lay open the claims of ‘art’ in this festival both as a set of insistent projections as well as a mesh of incomplete formations. The new artistic nomenclature of the festival, it is shown, is not easily secured and has to struggle to assert itself within the body of the religious event and the ephemeral mass spectacle.

The Editor
Tapati Guha-Thakurta is Professor in History and currently the Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). Her two main books are The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, Cambridge University Press, 1992, and Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, Columbia University Press and Permanent Black, 2004. She is also the author of several articles on the art and cultural history of modern India, and exhibition monographs.

In this collection of essays the author discusses the basics of Hinduism. Outlining the message of the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanisads, he argues that Hinduism is not a cult, nor a bunch of dogmas, but a religion of the highest order that speaks of an immanent and transcendental god. It also offers a philosophy of life that cuts across ethnic and geographic barriers between men. According to him, the essentials of Hindu religio- philosophic teaching are pervaded by the ideal of universalism and love for humanity. The author drives home the relevance of Hindu universalism to an age in which nations are armed for mutual annihilation. He maintains that successful application of the religio-philosophic teachings of Hindu seers will help humankind to overcome the worst crisis facing it in this nuclear age, and will lead to restructuring the world on the all-embracing principle of freedom and equity. The text is followed by the author’s lucid translation and commentary on Mundaka Upanisad. The book is the revised edition of his earlier Hinduism.

The Editor
Tapati Guha-Thakurta is Professor in History and currently the Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). Her two main books are The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, Cambridge University Press, 1992, and Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India, Columbia University Press and Permanent Black, 2004. She is also the author of several articles on the art and cultural history of modern India, and exhibition monographs.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface Ix-Xii
Introduction 1-28
1. The City Of The Festival 29-76
2. The Making Of A New Civic Event 77-116
3. Pre-Histories Of The Present On Artists And Awards 117-148
4. Pre-Histories Of The Present On Pratima And Pandal Makers 149-198
5. The Age Of The ‘Theme’ Puja 199-246
6. Demands And Dilemmas Of Durga Puja ‘Art’ 247-292
7. Durga Puja Tours And Travels 293-338
8. Destruction, Dispersals, Afterlives 339-364
Glossary 365-369
Bibliography 370-380
Index 381-390