A Durga Puja in south Calcutta has stitched together stories of harmony that took shape as people — Hindus and Muslims — displaced by the 1946 Calcutta riots found refuge on the road that hosts it.
Samaj Sebi Sangha on Lake Road got its name because of the service rendered by residents in sheltering those whose lives had been torn apart by the violence.
The puja started that very year. Freedom fighters like Leela Roy, one of the leaders of the rescue mission for the displaced, proposed it so that the prevalent communal tension could be contained through festivities.
The walls, windows and balconies of the grand Art Deco (a design style of the 1920s and 1930s characterised especially by bold outlines, geometric and zigzag patterns) houses lining the road still bear traces of that great unity.
On this 60-foot-wide road, individuals like Leela Roy, Meghnad Saha, Jadunath Sarkar, and Anil Roy created a map of unity, supported by residents of diverse religions and cultures.
It is that 80-year-old history that the puja organisers now hold onto once again on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Leela Roy, born on October 2.
Here, the divine is shorn of grandeur. The British Crown — that allowed the carnage — is the asura tucked at the feet of the goddess.
“In a world shattered again and again by the disease of religious and casteist divisions and the violence they breed, may the message from Samaj Sebi descend upon us always,” artist Pradip Das told Metro.
As visitors walk through the pandal, they encounter graffiti that says Pather Panchali (Tales of the Street)-1946.
“Tales of the Street tells the real story of 1946. The Art Deco houses on the street that had been crafted by Muslim masons were the ones that accommodated the victims of the riots. The 1946 riot was not only about a communal orgy. It was more about rising above the communal tension and striking a bond,” said Arijit Maitra of Samaj Sebi Sangha.
Maitra lives next to the pandal, in an Art Deco building constructed by Biren Maitra, Arijit’s grandfather, who co-founded the Calcutta Chemical Company.
Biren Maitra had riot victims in his house.
A 45-foot-long mural made of carved wood on the facade of the house carries slightly blurred images of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the prime minister of Bengal between 1946 and 1947, on whose watch the violence erupted, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the All India Muslim League leader, whose call for the Direct Action Day triggered the riots.
The mural features Calcutta’s map along the Hooghly, pointing out the riot-hit areas.
A vulture sits between Suhrawardy and Jinnah. Above the vulture is a chandelier that marks the birth of the Puja, introduced to curb an environment laced with hatred.
An enduring motif of the pandal is the image of a truck. Leela Roy, the founder of Samaj Sebi Sangha and a co-activist of
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, used a truck to crisscross the city in both Hindu and Muslim-dominated areas to save people from both communities.
The truck also features in the backdrop of the goddess.
“Here, the truck is a vahan (ride) of Durga, inspired by Leela Roy. The truck does not only carry petrol bombs that were used to fan the tension. It portrays a blam of compassion through personalities like Leela Roy. It doubles as a moving emblem of compassion, wheels extending beyond the contours of religion,” said Das.
The walls of the pandal are adorned with the stitched image of Leela Roy, a pioneering women’s rights activist, who died in 1970.
The reports in the major English dailies about the 1946 violence hang around the pandal.
The artist has created prototypes of a typewriter and a printing machine that would disseminate the heartwarming tales of unity and camaraderie in a sea of disinformation.
The granddaughter of Leela Roy, Sanghamitra Datta, said: “Leela Roy embodied feminism with a greater cause in her mind. To pull off what she did in a communally charged time is worth saluting. At a time when the country is engulfed by hatred, the tales of Leela Roy must be told even more.”