Durga Puja is one of the world's largest Hindu religious festivals, providing a window to globalization in West Bengal, India. The recent recognition of Durga Puja by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” brings recognition and economic potential but raises questions about Eurocentric authority in a rising tide of globalization. This study examines religious practices and celebrations in and around Kolkata during Fall 2022. A diverse spectrum of ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and photo documentation methods were employed. Varying perspectives of gaze facilitate analysis of large-scale celebration, increased secularization, and globalization. Through a lens of ethnographic theory and positionality, the origins of Durga Puja are examined in relation to contemporary expressions: including but not limited to the influence of the British and adjustments for the outsider gaze reflected with the Orientalist gaze of idealization, awe, or exploitation. The study contributes to a relevant yet under-researched phenomenon in the world's second most populous country.
Through interviews with current-day Durga Puja players, we glimpse tensions and reflections between insider and outsider gaze. The ethnographer's attempt to dismantle personal Orientalism (Said 1978, 1-3) meets the Indian idealization of whiteness and The United States, played out amongst selfie requests and sidewalk conversations. Whether the festival is secular or religious, party or puja becomes increasingly challenging to define. “...the festival has, over a long period of time, opened up a domain of social affect and transaction where the normative, institutional categories of the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ can neither fall comfortably in place nor be set off in opposition to each other” (Guha-Thakurta 2015, 5).
