The violent and often malignant forces of nature struck the fear of god in humans. Man deified them. That seemed the only way of placating these elemental powers. At a time when mobile phones are used in the furthest reaches of the country, we continue to propitiate these gods. The forces of nature are relentless.
The Raghabpur Catholic Mission is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, and the St Joseph's Catholic Church the 125th year of its foundation. The Raghabpur parish is located 10 kilometres south of Calcutta in South 24 Parganas, and east of Baruipur. Mahatma Gandhi Road passing through Tollygunge and Haridebpur leads to Kabardanga, and from there the road branches off left to Nepalgunge Julpia Road. Drying fish raises a stink here.
From here we are almost in the countryside. We have left the high-rises of Haridebpur far behind. Keorapukur canal runs along the road, and both sides are lined with small houses, many of them brick-and-cement dwellings, that have pushed aside the thickets, bamboo groves and clumps of trees. In between are fields and shallow waterbodies where fish is farmed. The air is hot and dry but the vegetation is lush. The bushes and shrubbery bristle with dozens of Trinamul flags bundled together. Mamata and her mayor smile from rooftops.
Porcelain tiles with pictures of Jesus Christ are embedded on the walls of some houses, while crosses are displayed on the roofs of others. Crosses are planted in the middle of fields. These are graves. I encountered several small shrines (one sports a digital clock) dedicated to Mother Mary at street corners. The Lady wears a sari. At Bakeswar Bazar one takes a left turn past huts and ponds and the high walls of St Paul's Middle Vernacular School to reach the church. Behind the school is the rural campus of St Xavier's College that opened recently. In front of one pond is a spindly concrete gate in the memory of Diya Makhal (2013-2014) who had drowned in it. In a glass case above the gate is a photograph of the little girl along with an image of Mother Mary.
I visited Raghabpur two days before Poila Boisakh, and the men and women in the market wore garlands of white thread ( uttari), indicating that they were devotees of Shiva who participate in the Gajan festival held on the eve of the Bengali new year.
A colour photograph of the church on the cover of a book published by the Raghabpur mission shows a cream-and-red tiered structure with a spire, not unlike a Brahmo temple. The church before me is grey. Sadhana Karali, who has a Phd on the influence of Christianity on Bengali culture and who teaches at St Paul's MV school, explains that the church was renovated recently when it underwent this transformation.
The acanthus on the capitals of the Corinthian order has turned into lotus petals and giant crosses and oversized candles have been grafted onto the grey façade. The images of St Joseph, to whom the church is dedicated, and Our Lady of Vailankanni were left untouched. Karali says that the local masons who built the church had added the images of two folk deities - Dharmathakur and a serpent, the vehicle of Goddess Manasa - to the façade. I strain my eyes but cannot detect these aberrations.
This is the Mother Church of the Diocese of Baruipur. It is the first church of the entire Sunderbans area. Fr Patrick Walsh S.J., is the parish priest and seven other priests are involved in education.
On my second trip to Raghabpur almost three weeks later, I met Fr K. Thottam S.J., now 81, who has been here for three terms, beginning 1963, when he joined as a brother, and in the 1970s and the 1990s. He is in charge of Kala Hriday, a cultural centre. Here Fr Saju George S.J., who has a Phd in Bharatnatyam, and has created dance compositions based on Bible stories, has opened a dance school. The Catholic church promotes inculturation - adaptation to Indian culture - and church service is in Bengali and at marriages garlands are exchanged, and the bride wears sindur, says Fr Thottam.
He goes back to a time when canals were the only means of communication. Raghabpur church had its own light country boat, a shalti. A wealthy man named Nibaran Bag, who owned 2,78,000 bighas, handed over Rs 1 lakh to Prafulla Chandra Sen, then chief minister, for a road to be built here. "In those days dacoits could break in even if a man kept Rs 100 at home," chuckles the small and spry priest. So Nibaran divided the money among his three assistants who tucked the cash in their dhoti waist and walked all the way to Writers' Buildings.
The road was complete in 1975 and the bus service on route 40A started. But the woes of the destitute people - 90 per cent of them belonged to the backward classes - were not over, thanks to flooding. Several development projects later since the 1970s, waste water from south Calcutta flows through the Keorapukur canal at high tide. But the youth are still jobless and in desperation move out of the state in search of work.
Along with Sadhana Karali, who was showing me around the first day, were her colleagues, Amrita Rong, Rabin Poti, whose forefathers were pandas of the Puri Jagannath temple, the choirmaster Mihir Sinha, Anup Gayen and Raben Makhal. Like most residents of Raghabpur, they belonged to the backward classes or were Rajbangshis, and were the first ones to convert. They still wear these badges of their discarded social identity.
Inside the church, it is difficult to breathe in the heat. The tiled roof has been replaced with asbestos sheets. The original squat pillars were knocked down to make room for large congregations. The incandescent figures of the Holy Family glow warmly on the stained glass windows behind the altar. A spiral masonry staircase takes one to a verandah. Hanging from the ceiling are three huge bells that were gifts in 1939 from what used to be Yugoslavia.
Prominently placed in one corner of the church is a large fibreglass effigy of Christ made by Krishnagar artisans. With one arm raised, he could have been posing as Sri Krishna Chaitanya. He wears a giant rainbow halo of paper flowers. He stands on a platform and against a backdrop of the same dazzling material. This could have been a float in a carnival parade in Rio. Behind him is a white fibreglass Pieta - Michelangelo indeed - with the stigmata painted blood red.
At the other end of the church, lies the body of Christ after his descent from the cross covered with a red and black shroud. On Good Friday, this effigy is taken out in a procession in which 10,000 to 12,000 devotees participate. At the church entrance is the Holy Family from Belgium. Mary wears a printed sari. In a grotto outside, Mary wears a sari with a red border. She could be mistaken for Behula on her quest to bring her husband back from the dead. Kalighat has many such effigies. My cicerone says on Good Friday, Hindu mothers offer saris to Mary, keep fasts, and after a ritual bath in the church pond, do penance by prostrating themselves before the Mother, progressively moving forward thus ( dandi kata). The distance covered thereby depends on the severity of the penance. The more gods the merrier for Hindus.
Folk cultures often flourish in the hinterlands alongside mainstream faiths. Amrita Rong said Chadak mela is held in the village on the last day of the Bengali calendar. Thereafter, Goshtho mela is held. Horse racing is its biggest attraction. The folk god, Dakshinray, who is armed to the teeth and has flaming eyes, is worshipped along with Manasa and Sitala on various days of the Bengali calendar.
On my way back from Raghabpur, I stopped dead in my tracks when I noticed a curious triangular brick structure with crowned heads placed on niches along its two sides. Even more strange was a giant crocodile made of wet clay lying by the side of the triangle. A narrow bamboo bridge took me to the other side of the canal. Behind the triangular structure is a pond and adjacent to it is a shrine where Manasa, Radha Krishna, Shiva, Kali and Sitala are worshipped. The gaping jaws of the croc complete with nails for teeth looks amazingly real.
Children were playing in the open space and behind the pond is a cluster of mud huts. A gnarled old man sits on his haunches. He is Gopal Majhi in his 70s, a daily wage earner, and he says Barathakur is worshipped here on the first day of Magh, according to the Bengali calendar. But the Goddess Ganga was being worshipped before the Bengali new year. The better-known vehicle of this goddess is the mythical makar with an elephantine trunk. It is a popular motif for bangles. But here she is symbolized by the crocodile.
According to Debabrata Naskar's essay, Loksanskritir Oitihye Lokdebata, in the book, Baruipurer Itihas, Barathakur's head is primarily a small clay pitcher ( ghot) placed upside down. It is painted white with lime. The dilated eyes of the god and his moustache are painted on this. He wears a betel-leaf-shaped crown. Often his supposedly female counterpart is placed next to the hirsute god. Some folklorists are of the opinion that he is the Lord of Tigers, Dakshinray. Naskar avers that this is sun and moon worship. He is worshipped for the welfare and prosperity of the homestead.
On my second visit, I met Gopal Majhi's wife, Usha. They are Rajbangshis and they live in a hutment with their children. The than, or place of worship, belongs to them and they do the puja themselves. She says Ganga will be worshipped again on Dashahara on June 15. The scorching sun has splintered the croc from side to side.
