'Don't Sit Idol': Exploring Patuapara and Kalighat Art

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'Don't Sit Idol': Exploring Patuapara and Kalighat Art

Kalighat is one of the oldest and culturally significant neighborhoods in South Kolkata, with a history deeply intertwined with the formation and growth of the city itself. The area is primarily known for the revered Kalighat Kali Temple, whose origins trace back to fifteenth-century texts, although the present temple structure was built in 1809 under the patronage of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family, who also provided extensive land grants to sustain the temple rituals. Besides its central importance as a place of pilgrimage, the neighbourhood and its environs gave rise to some of the most enduring urban art forms in the city, as painters (or 'patuas') attempted to carve out a livelihood from selling popular images of gods and sacred narratives, and increasingly, more secular commentaries on the profane life of the colonial city.

Historically, Kalighat was part of the thirty-three villages collectively known as Dihi Panchannagram, which fell under the jurisdiction of the East India Company after the mid-eighteenth century and was considered a suburban area beyond the old city boundary marked by the Maratha Ditch. Although this has been contested, the name ‘Kalighat’ itself is believed to be a source for the original name of Kolkata (Calcutta), demonstrating the area's foundational significance to the city's identity.

Culturally, Kalighat evolved as a vibrant site of religious and popular artistic expressions. The temple precinct attracted artisans such as scroll painters and idol makers, notably in the adjacent neighbourhood of Patuapara, where families transitioned from traditional patachitra painting to idol-making in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, although some artists have retained their longstanding practice of scroll painting, incorporating new subjects, styles and patrons. This neighbourhood served as a hub for pilgrims and cultural productions centred around the goddess Kali, linking religious practices with local livelihoods and arts, such as the famous Kalighat painting style, which emerged as a nationalist artistic idiom resisting colonial dominance in nineteenth and twentieth century Bengal.

However, its anti-colonial reputation in the colonial city of Calcutta was not a simple one. As the scholar Deonnie Moodie put it in a conversation for the DAG Journal: ‘Kalighat, despite its significance as a prominent temple in Calcutta, was often reviled by Hindu reformers. It embodied everything they sought to reform: polytheism, iconoclasm, and unrefined forms of worship. The temple's depiction of the goddess Kali with her elongated tongue, holding severed heads, and adorned with skulls epitomized a form of worship that clashed with the sanitised versions propagated by reformers.'

‘Daily animal sacrifices, still practiced at Kalighat, further fuelled its notoriety among reformers and colonial administrators alike. Figures such as Vivekananda, despite being raised by a Shakta mother who frequented Kalighat, notably omitted any mention of the temple in their works—a silence that speaks volumes about societal perceptions.’

Despite its vilification, it was acknowledged as a potent site of power, a place where devotees sought miracles and interventions. This duality underscores a broader societal dichotomy: the powerful often exist outside the bounds of respectability, especially for those shaped by the prevalent bhadralok ethos.

Ramendranath Chakravorty

The neighbourhood’s history is marked by the layering of social and political changes, including British colonial administration and the assertion of indigenous religious authority, which played out through temple administration and urban transformations. The Kalighat temple complex also features other significant temples, such as the Shyam Rai Temple, built in the nineteenth century, indicating a pluriform religious landscape. The area's dense population and colonial-era modernisation efforts brought about conflicts, and resistance among different class groups, making Kalighat a crucial locale for understanding modern Kolkata's socio-cultural evolution.