The Making of Goddess Durga in Bengal: Art, Heritage and the Public

Samir Kumar Das is Professor of Political Science at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata. Previously Vice-Chancellor of the University of North Bengal, Dean of Arts of the University of Calcutta and Postdoctoral Fellow (2005) of the Social Science Research Council (South Asia Program), he is Coordinator of the University Grants Commission-Departmental Research Support (UGC-DRS) Programme (Phases II & III) on ‘Democratic Governance: Comparative Perspectives’. He served as Visiting Fellow at the European Academy, Bolzano, Italy (2008), Adjunct Professor of Government at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University (2014), Visiting Professor of the North East India Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi in 2015, and at the University of Paris 13 under Universite Sorbonne Paris Cite in 2016 among many of his assignments. He specializes in and writes on issues of ethnicity, identity, security, migration, rights and justice and has contributed over 190 research papers to highly esteemed national and international journals and edited volumes. Besides, he has been Regular Reviewer of some of the top journals, publishing houses and research bodies including Minority Rights International (London), EU-India Social Science and Humanities Platform (Lubljana) and European Research Council (Brussels). Bishnupriya Basak is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta.  She has been Recipient of many grants and awards, chiefly, Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship in the UK, awarded by the Nehru Trust for Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001), a short-term award from the Maison de l’Orient Mediterraneen Jean  Pouilloux, Lyon, France (2001), the UK Travel Award from the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2009), a short-term grant from Fondation Maison des Sciences  de l’Homme (FMSH), Paris (2009), and a researchgrant from Society of Antiquaries of London (2015). She was also nominated by ICCR as a member of the Indian delegation that visited Vietnam in 2005 and remained Honorary Lecturer of University College London, 2010–2014. Her specialization is in Bengal prehistory but she also researches extensively on archaeological theory, heritage studies and issues of historiography in Indian archaeology. She has more than thirty published papers to her credit, as well as a monograph and two (co) edited volumes. She is on the editorial board of peer-reviewed journals like Public Archaeology and has been nominated as the Sectional President, Archaeology of 81st Session of the Indian History Congress, 2020. 

Chapter 1. Debi Durga From Idol to Icon (Mrinmoyee Deb).- Chapter 2. Memorialising Tradition, Constructing Heritage : Work, Life and Social Transformation among the Kumbhakars (Shoma Choudhury-Lahiri).- Chapter 3. In Search of the Prototype – An Art Historical Enquiry into the Evolving Form of Protimas’ in Kumartuli, West Bengal (Soujit Das).- Chapter 4. Kumartuli Durga  as Heritage: a Study in Iconography (Debdutta Gupta).- Chapter 5. Durga Puja, Kitsch and the Politics of Popular Entertainment (Pradeep Kumar Bose).- Chapter 6. Re-imagining Kumartuli- the cultural politics of artisanal production and the shaping of urban imaginaries (Madhumita Mazumdar).- Chapter 7. Durga Puja in Glasgow (John Reuben Davies).- Chapter 8. The Rhyme of Color and Clay (Rong Matir Panchali).