Hindu festivals in small town India: patronage, play, piety

ABSTRACT This article shows how the burgeoning Hindu festivals in small town West Bengal – in Hooghly and Nadia – can be understood as a dynamic interplay of political patronage, play as rivalry and revelry, and finally piety. The article argues that in a strategic implementation of competitive Hindutva (Hindu nationalism), the concept of utsab instead of puja is employed by the political leadership to appease the Hindu majority while ostensibly signalling towards Hindu-Muslim harmony and inclusivity. In addition, it argues that the need for decentralisation and fair distribution of resources between the metropolis and the rest of the state is expressed through festival rivalries. Furthermore, the article demonstrates the place of popular culture and aspirations towards a global urban lifestyle in the spaces of libidinal pleasures and pageantry in the festival. Finally, despite the increasingly transgressive revelry, there is a continuing, shrinking yet inviolable presence of devotion and Brahminical or priestly caste doctrine in the festival.

small-town festivals are thriving despite all odds due to patronage of both industry and the political party in power, and interests of the local organisers and revellers. Furthermore, these festivals tell us about the political use of Hindu festivals as non-religious carnivals to carve out a space for regional competitive Hindutva (or Hindu nationalism).
Since 2018, the chief minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee has used the slogan: 'Religion is individual, but the festival is communal' ('Dharma jar jar, utsab shabar') while congratulating the citizens of the state during important religious festivals such as Durga puja (Hindu festival), Eid, Buddha Purnima, Christmas, Chhat puja, etc. 2 She supplanted the term puja which has a clear Hindu ritual connotation with the term utsab which means a carnival, festival, or celebration which may or may not belong to any religious community. West Bengal has a majority Hindu population, with the largest religious minority being the approximately 27 per cent Muslim population mostly concentrated in the northern parts of the state. The message from the Chief Minister (CM) can be contextualised with the rising tensions between the Hindu and Muslim communities after the election and the re-election of the Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in two consecutive landslide electoral victories in 2014 and 2019.
The West Bengal CM Banerjee's message 'Religion is individual, but the festival is communal' is prominent in the public sphere, typically appearing next to her portrait. It appears on newspapers, large road-side signage on important junctions, on the party and the chief minister's social media handles, and several other public commercial channels such as INCODA TV, the television channel played on the Kolkata Metro, signage on railway stations and bus stops, and other private news channels aired in West Bengal and beyond. The status of the festival industry has been aggrandised with the inclusion of the Durga puja in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. 3 West Bengal, under Mamata Banerjee, has transformed into a region of unending festivities. This phenomenon is unique in scale, but not in form, to Banerjee's regime. Ostor's study of political and the religious in a small town of West Bengal Vishnupur, conducted in the 1960s during the communist regime, shows how history and legend, revolution and politics, and the organisation of pujas are not distinct affairs in Bengal (Ostor 2004, 8).
Spectacular festivals such as Durga puja of Kolkata and Jagatdhatri puja of Chandannagar, which attract revellers from other areas of West Bengal, have histories dating back at least to the late nineteenth century (Guha-Thakurta 2015;McDermott 2011). Rash festival, based on the myth of Radha and Krishna, dates back to the early eighteenth century and is still celebrated in several parts of Bengal. However, over the last fifty years, small towns in the Hooghly district of West Bengal such as Barasat, Magra, Bansberiya and Pandua have been celebrating five-day-long festivals aided by corporate funding and the political patronage of the Trinamool Congress party (TMC henceforth). These 2 Christmas is celebrated by Hindu Bengalis on certain parts of the erstwhile colonial centre of town such as Park Street much like the grandest Hindu festival. It is also celebrated as carnivals among Dalit Christian communities in marginal parts of Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal. Hindu Bengalis wear their fineries, eat outside, buy cake and Christmas trees, and attend mass at the Catholic Church nearby too. Christmas or barodin is considered an integral part of the Hindu ritual calendar. Eid, on the other hand, is celebrated exclusively by the Muslim community in West Bengal. In several cases when Eid and Hindu festivals are on consecutive days or overlap, civic authorities intervene to make sure that the massive processions do not create communal disharmony. 3 For details, see UNESCO entry 'Durga puja in Kolkata', 2021. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/durga-puja-in-kolkata-00703 (Accessed: 10.03.22).
festivals have not only extended the scripturally prescribed ritual duration of the puja (worship) of Saraswati, Kali and Kartick, but they have also introduced the public worship of deities like Ganesh, Vishnu and Bharat Mata on these festive occasions. The research for this article was conducted for a period of seven years from 2012 to 2019. Over these years I have followed the festival cycle in different towns of Nadia and Hooghly -Magra 4 (saraswati puja), Pandua 5 (Kali puja), Barasat 6 (Kali puja), Nabadwip 7 (Rash), and Bansberiya 8 (Kartick puja)by visiting during the peak season, or staying for a duration of a week up to a month before and after the festival days. I have hung out, formed friendships, and stayed in touch with several interlocuters from these towns. I used multi-sited ethnography which allowed me to tie together 'fuzzy fields'social worlds as a constellation of field sites which are bound together not by cartographical lines but by networks of agents and communications (Marcus 1995;Nadai and Maeder 2005). Moreover, go-along methods of ethnography were particularly useful for the study of urban lifeworlds, everyday practices, spatial configurations and social architecture (Kusenbach 2003). Finally, I used visual methods of still images and videos to capture the visual and sensory nature of festivals. Small-town festivals are spaces of libidinal excess, revelry, spectacular and sensorial intensities, and all forms of inebriation. In simple words: it is a party on the streets. As a visibly elite woman in these spaces, my findings have been refracted through my gendered identity. My gendered identity, however, was complex in this fieldbest described as a proxy male, i.e., I was allowed certain liberties and access which are not allowed for local women. Given my long association and trust with key informants, I was permitted as a proxy male and sometimes a trophy (an English-speaking 'modern' 'female friend' from abroad) in exclusively male spaces of partying, drinking, and drugs.
A dynamic interplay of patronage, play, and piety are at the core of this emerging festival network (Teeuwen, Sen, and Rots 2023). In the first section of the article, I demonstrate the entanglement of political patronage, corporate funding, and the interests of young men who are the organisers of the festivals. In the next two sections, I bring out the element of play in the festivals. First, I show how rivalry between the small towns and the metropolis and a bid for higher status is part of the dynamic of play in the festivals. Second, I show how moral, social, and familial conventions are broken as public spaces are transformed into spaces of inebriation, libidinal pleasures, and male camaraderie during these Hindu festivals. Finally, I question the place of piety during these proceedings. What is the place for devotion during the festivities?
Patronage: the minister and her men Situated in an increasingly intolerant Hindu nationalist country, the federal state of West Bengal has had a radically different policy regarding religious diversity. While the economic development of the Muslim community remains threatened by the supremacy of caste Hindus in West Bengal's administrative frameworks (Chandra, Heierstad, and Nielsen 2015), the Chief Minister has several welfare policies based on affirmative action, a large number of Muslim cabinet ministers, and a so-called pro-Muslim image in the public sphere. Photos of Banerjee, a Hindu Brahmin woman with her Muslim ministers and constituents are used by her party to show their religious tolerance, and by the opposition to accuse them of 'minority-appeasement' and polarisation (Cf. Nielsen 2011) (Figure 1).
These photos are of Banerjee offering namaz (Muslim prayer) in different parts of her Muslim constituency in the state, wearing one end or the anchol of her sari as a hijab, and greeting her constituents with a gesture of 'aadab' 9 (see Figure 2) as opposed to namaskar. 10 Hindu nationalist politicians from Northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar routinely refer to West Bengal as 'mini-Pakistan' in their speeches in order to point to the favouritism towards the Muslim community of West Bengal at the cost of the oppression of the Hindu majority. Hindu Nationalist extremists also refer to Banerjee as an agent of Islamisation of West Bengal. Yet, Banerjee has also emerged as the sole patron of Hindu festivals in the state since her election in 2011.
In this context of West Bengal, what does it mean for the leader of the state to say 'Religion is individual but the festival is communal'? The primary and common perception of this message seems to suggest an assertion of communal (i.e., Hindu-Muslim) harmony from the state authorities during public processions, festivities, and celebrations of religious rituals. But to anyone who has observed the leadership style and political agenda of Banerjeepolitical scientists, psephologists, and all the Bengali men who discuss politics in tea-stalls as morning and evening ritualsutsab (festival) is a layered and complex term to use. In the aftermath of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) regime with a leftist public detachment from religious rituals, Banerjee is the main patron of all Hindu festivals throughout the state, actively using public funds to build the festival culture. As I have showed elsewhere (Sen 2018(Sen , 2021, festivals are not only the main tool of janasangjog or mass communication for the CM, they are an effective way of rearing and patronising 'cadres', local youth in neighbourhoods through informal political patronage networks. The representatives of the political partyat the block, district, state, and national levelare all patrons of grand Hindu festivals. They channel wealth, provide for festival organisers, and protect organisers from civic authorities such as the municipality and police when the festival gets in the way of civic regulations such as noise and environmental pollution, traffic laws, and so on. This network between the political party and the festival-organising bodies is a symbiotic relationship whereby the ministers increase their cadre or informal political network of male actors. In return, young men find a source of income and the protection of the minister's network. 9 The gesture of aadab involves raising the right hand towards the face with palm inwards such that it is in front of the eyes and the finger tips are almost touching the forehead, as the upper torso is bent forward. 10 The gesture of namaskar or namaste (in Hindi) involves folded hands near the chest, and bowing forward.
Youth clubs, neighbourhood-based civic bodies comprising of men of varying agegroups, are responsible for the organisation and execution of these festivals in West Bengal. These youth clubs, commonly called 'local/para clubs', delimit their scope of activity to a para or a neighbourhood where they act as adjudicators of local conflicts, providers of free medical care, and similar pro bono social work. While they appear in the role of a local-level civic body which addresses the gaps in administration, they have informal ties with political parties who utilise their micro-level involvement with the units of a neighbourhood (Dayabati and Sarathi 2006;Harrison 2012). In areas with prominent festival cultures, the major role of a local club is the organisation of goddess festivals (Guha-Thakurta 2015, 14). In these areas, local clubs exhibit rivalry with each other in a bid for status, honour and advertising revenues.
In my interviews with local club members in Magra, two spectacular festivals were named repeatedly as the ideal they aspire to: Kolkata's Durga puja and Chandannagar's Jagatdhatri puja. The interest of local clubs who organise these festivals relate to the status, recognition and political clout of their neighbourhood and town in comparison to Kolkata, Chandannagar and other prominent cities in West Bengal. This bid for status through festival organisation is a way of compensating for the unequal distribution of infrastructure, cultural capital and development between the small towns and the metropoles.
Yet the interest of the local club is not just at the institutional level, it is also at the individual level. In 2020, due to COVID-19, large-scale gatherings were not allowed. This led to fewer advertising revenues, among other factors which slowed down the festival economy. The chief minister compensated for this by allocating state funds as welfare benefits or dole to each local club which would then be distributed among the members. It is open secret among the common people of neighbourhoods in West Bengal that local club members embezzle funds for the organisation of festivals (including state funds). Working in the local club is a natural rite of passage into the informal patronage networks of the ruling political party. Especially in the last decade, where the unemployment of educated youth has been a crisis in the state, this is seen as an opportunity for unemployed men. Middle-class Bengali society perceives local clubs in line with political party offices and the local administrationas 'dirty politics' (see Sen 2021). For the youth, however, these club networks leading to the party offices and the inner circle of ministers is a lucrative, if not 'respectable', livelihood (Figures 3 and 4).
In the images above we see the coming together of three iconsthe Hindu deity, the chief minister, and the local minister. The name of the local Youth club and the neighbourhood it represents frames these icons. The visual arrangement of these posters illustrates the political patronage network succinctly: local organisers and the middle-man minister show themselves offering their allegiance to the chief minister presiding over the festivities together with the Hindu deity. As I pointed to earlier, the leading political party's interest in patronising these festivals is arguably in the creation of vote banks in the metropolitan and small-town areas of West Bengal. The emic idea of utsab or 'festival' as opposed to puja and dharma or religion is a crucial aspect of the flourishing smalltown festival cultures and Banerjee's personal brand of secularism. Banerjee's understanding of secularism includes active financial support and public participation in all religions in the state. Yet, in a Hindu majority state with a large number of Hindu festivalsbaro maashey tero parbon, or thirteen festivals in twelve months -Hinduism appears 'more equal' than other religions. By turning Hindu religious activities into festivals for everyone, Banerjee finds a way to negotiate the problem of the unequal visibility of minority religious celebrations in public spaces. While Banerjee is repeatedly accused of 'minority appeasement' in every election season, the translation of Hindu festivals or pujas into utsab or carnivals has been her way of appeasing the majority, particularly the male Hindu youth. I have argued elsewhere that this is a form of competitive Hindutvai.e., a strategic form of public exhibition Hindu piety and identity by political leaders opposing the Hindu nationalist party in order to secure the Hindu vote banks (Sen and Nielsen 2021). This strategic form of competitive Hindutva is particularly important in the infrastructurally deprived suburban and rural Bengal which has a history of Hindu nationalist movements and a great attraction towards the contemporary Hindu nationalist party (Bhattacharya 2020).

Play 1: mimicry and rivalry
Play, one of the central themes of this thematic issue, is at the heart of both rivalry and revelry. It is as much a competitive bid for victory and glory as it is about the carnivalesque, 11 joy, and conviviality. In this section, I explore the aspect of play that has to do with the bid for honour and status through competitions and rivalry. In her germinal study of the goddess festivals (2011), Rachel F. McDermott found revelry and rivalry to be intertwined elements endemic to the puja culture of West Bengal. She correctly analyses the organisers motivation as 'the quest for symbolic capital (…), the desire to be seen engaging in conspicuous consumption (…), and the utilization of the public sphere for recognition, reward, or lobbying opportunities' (9). She refers back to the theories of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, and Tom Driver to argue that despite being fun and effervescent, the element of play in ritual matters comprises agonistic, competitive, and ludic aspects. She found that everyone involved in the festivalfrom the elite patrons of festivals such as seventeenth-century monarchs and aristocrats to contemporary club members and image-makers in Kolkata and even American diasporic communitiestook great pleasure in competition. They enjoyed taking risks, defeating their rivals, and displaying their victory, in a competition for status, recognition, and different kinds of rewards.
Small-town festivals, which were outside the scope of McDermott's study, add a new dimension to the question of rivalry. What is at stake in the rivalry noted in these festivals is not just competition between neighbouring organisers; this is a rivalry of the emerging festivals of small towns towards the pomp and glory of metropolitan festivals. It is the rivalry against the cultural hegemony of Kolkata.
Your Kolkata is dirty, dishonest, and full of sarkari babus (public sector bureaucrats) who don't do anything … but we have to take crowded trains and go there for everything in our livesfrom birth to job to death. Who had ever heard of Kolkata in the twelfth century when our Nadia was the intellectual capital of Bengal? This is where Bengal was born! But then the shahebs (sahib, British colonisers) came and set up shop there … we were not shaheber gu chata (brownnosing, lit. licking the shit of sahibs) but now we have to accept this never ending golami (slavery) of the shahebs. (Interview with a tea stall owner) While conducting fieldwork as a Calcutta-born woman in different parts of West Bengal, from Purulia in the West to Nadia in the East, I have been repeatedly told that other districts, villages, and even smaller cities are a lot more habitable than Kolkata. Yet centralisation, not just the concentration of all administrative headquarters in Kolkata, but also educational and cultural institutions force migration and movement towards the difficult life of the city. Small towns in West Bengal, as I mentioned earlier, are deprived of economic resources and cultural capital compared to metropoles all over South Asia. For example, historical studies of municipal reforms and the structuring of towns vis-à-vis the colonial metropolis of Kolkata show us how the institution of the municipal corporation in West Bengal was a result of British laws and the interactions of the major elites or the young, urbane bhadraloks (gentlemen) of Calcutta (Furedy 1979). The investment of various economic and cultural resources in Calcutta has created an anxious relationship between the metropolis and other 'fluid' provincial spaces (Sengupta 2012) such as the sub-urban hinterland and small towns. The prejudice against the designation of a mofussil, a pre-colonial term for semi-urban areas, has been overwritten by the prestige of the category of 'census town', a new formulation according to the urbanisation drive in India. These 'census towns' are both frontier and hinterland for vernacular capitalists who are either regionally based or ousted from the metropoles due to competition from bigger multinational brands. For multinational industries, the small-town market functions as an unexplored frontier of the neoliberal marketplace. For example, Domino's pizza, an American company, has temporary stations in several of these small-town festivals next to the traditional food stalls. Pizza has gained appeal as a 'Western' and therefore high-status commodity despite being more expensive than traditional carnival food in West Bengal.
The struggle between notions of 'provinciality' of the small town in relation to the 'modernity' of the metropolis applies to cultural goods and commodities too. The anxiety bred by the disparity in the cultural capital produced and consumed in the metropolis vis-à-vis the mofussil is also noted across the border in Bangladesh, as Lotte Hoek points out in her study of mofussil cinema (Hoek 2012). Festivals are perhaps the most visible and popular cultural expression in West Bengal. The small towns of Hooghly use Hindu festival cultures, in line with the royal and aristocratic seventeenth-century patrons, to assert their status and cultural capital. The grandeur of the festivals signals money, prosperity, political fortunes, and the status of the small town as an urban centre not only to other competing towns but also to colonial cities like Chandannagar and Kolkata.
It is a popular opinion among people of West Bengal that the small-town festivals aspire to the grandeur of the Kolkata festivals because of the vast amounts of money from corporate sponsorship and political patronage. Small-town festivals hire awardwinning visual artists who build the goddess image and the pandal, or the temporary marquee around the central icon. These artists often ship the material from their warehouses, reuse the pandal, and sometimes even the deity image. For example, the artists create replica architecture as a 'theme' of the yearthe pyramids of Egypt, or the Hogwarts castleas the structure which houses the goddess.
This kind of replica architecture opens the world for Bengalis who are famously drawn to domestic tourism in India. But it also invites the world home to Bengal. The urban space is transformed into a heterotopic display and carnival. Replica architecture is not merely a copy, it is a complex form of mimicry that deterritorialises global iconic structures from their national and historical contexts, taking them as pure simulacrum, reinscribes them with local symbols and forms, and thus reterritorialises them in the local festival context. The Hogwarts castle becomes reinscribed as a temple for a Hindu goddess in a suburban Kolkata neighbourhood. Replica architecture reveals a complex process of mimicry, rivalry, and the longing to possess and consume global icons.
'Themes' that have become popular in the festival season of Kolkata, which precedes the others, are echoed in the small-town pujas. Yet, every iteration produces its own signification in the case of replica structures. For example, on the occasion of Kartick puja, a local club in Bansberiya, a small town in Hooghly, presented a replica of the Victoria Memorial of Kolkata (see Figure 6). The British Victoria Memorial (see Figure 5) serves as the prime tourist attraction in Kolkata for domestic tourists including those from within the state. The intervention created in the work of the local decorators from Hooghly district vernacularised the colonial monument, including the figure of the queen. Victoria was shown as a seated figure, but unlike the original in Kolkata (see Figure 5), she was draped in a sari complete with a veil (see Figure 8). The imperial symbol of the globe in her hand in the original sculpture was transformed into a ghat (Kalasha, a symbol of abundance), which is a part of goddess Lakshmi's iconography in Bengal. The figure of Victoria is morphed with the iconography of goddess Lakshmi as she sits in front of a canon made from wood and bamboo (see Figures 7  and 8). The most distinctive feature of this rendition of the Victoria Memorial is the inner dome of the monument which is adorned with murals showing the coronation of British royalty in the original (see Figures 9-12). In this version, the inner wall of the dome is illuminated with flex prints of popular images of nationalist icons (Tagore, Aurobindo Ghosh, Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutta and so on) (see Figure 13), along with photographs of Queen Victoria and the contemporary British royal family (see Figures 11 and 13).  The reinscription and reimagining of a monument which symbolises the city of Kolkata and its colonial modernity in a small town of Hooghly is significant. The districts of Hooghly and Nadia have a strong regional identity that competes with the economic, administrative and cultural hegemony of metropolitan Bengalis. The regional identity of these districts and their claim to authentic Bengali culture in relation to the colonial modernity of the metropolis is reflected in the festival culture. The spirit of rivalry regarding status and visibility between the local clubs of Kolkata, which is one of the main factors behind the rich, sprawling Durga puja (Guha-Thakurta 2015; McDermott 2011), is remarkably similar in these mofussils as they claim that their artists, decorators, sponsors and participants are just as grand as Kolkata's Durga puja.
Even though this kind of analysis is beyond the scope of this study, it is interesting to conceptualise the flow of cultural commodities and cultural capital in the light of dependency theory. Dependency theory as a theory of development, simply put, argues that  resources from the periphery or developing parts of the world are drained into the 'core' or the developed part of the world integrating them into a world system (Ferraro 2008). While this theory arose in Latin America in reaction to modernisation theory mainly to  understand development within a political-economic framework, the same core-periphery model has been applied to understand the flow of cultural capital and cultural forms (Niblett 2021). While the metropolis benefits from the cultural heritage of Bengal as a whole, the seat of cultural capital and institutions remains the metropolis. Yet, we must also note a notorious idea in political discourse that Kolkata mimics London as its aspirational metropolis. Why else would Mamata Banerjee plant a replica model of the Big Ben close to the airport and her administrative headquarters to go along with her promise to 'turn Kolkata into London' (Bose 2011)? In the mode of colonial mimicry, as Homi Bhabha proposes (1984), the replica Big Ben, much like the replica Victoria Memorial, is a mimic form that necessarily produces its own slippage and results in mockery. Kolkata, the erstwhile colonial capital Calcutta, aspires to be  London while small town Bansberiya in Hooghly aspires to the colonial modernity of Calcutta. The periphery aspires towards and mimics the nearest centre. However, even that centre is in a periphery aspiring to a more global centre.
In addition, 'acting as if' is a key feature of the play in festivals (Teeuwen, Sen, and Rots 2023). One of the key features of what is understood as the carnivalesque is the reversal of hierarchiesfor example, peasants acting as princes. The mimicry in these situations -Magra mimicking Kolkata, and Kolkata mimicking Londonis an example of the essential carnivalesque drive in Bengal festival cultures. Mimicry, satire, and reversal of hierarchy go hand in hand in the way global images, icons, and monuments are playfully mixed in the festival space ( Figure 14).
Play 2: the aspirational and the ludic Most Indians are millennials inheriting a slowing economy where new forms of gift economies from the state replace older socialist welfare structures depleted by the liberalisation of the economy and crony capitalism. Even as the youth are faced with very few possibilities of long-term employment with benefits and a lack of available public sector jobs, they find some hope in the global ideology around entrepreneurship, gig economies, and the promise of development via multinational IT industries. The emergent lower to middle classes do not save money like their parents who grew up in the Nehruvian socialist economy; they live on concepts of jugaad, or vernacular innovations, risqué entrepreneurship, and a credit economy driven by conspicuous consumption. They are guided by the fantasy of the good life which is accessible to the top 1%. This aspirational life is paraded on television and in popular cultureespecially Bombay cinema or Bollywood, the single most important ideological force in contemporary India. The aspirational life is that of an upper-class English-speaking urbanite who lives on top of a high-rise building, where the air looks clean. They have all kinds of appliances and the latest gadgets. Images of this lifestylebeing highly global and generic in appearancecould be located in Singapore, Dubai, London, or Mumbai. This lifestyle of great riches is also a simulacrum associated with global capitalism (Figure 15). In a visit to one of the small towns, Magra, during Saraswati puja, I noticed the aesthetic and sensorial reinvention of the public space of this small town based on the aspirations of the middle classes. It is common for local clubs to choose an emcee or anchor who announces practical information and generally communicates with the visitors at the pandal. In a town where the majority of the crowd is not composed of Anglophones, the language of presentation in a few pandals was English. In one pandal, the emcee congratulated people on Valentine's Day in public announcements, something that the forces of Hindu Nationalism have resisted as immoral and western (Brosius 2012). In this town, one finds the symbolic cultural markers and free-floating surface images what Baudrillard calls 'pure simulacrum' (Baudrillard 2001)images of the ancient Egyptian tableaus, Batman, Superman and Disney characters in the LED light panels decorating the city, the use of English language to address the audience, the repeated notices for the audience stating that the pandals are Wi-Fi zones, the sale of branded cars in pandals and so on (Figures 16 and 17).
The magic and charm of these festivals for the revellers is the spectacle and novelty of commodities (Figure 18), technology, and festival architecture. The use of English, the Valentine's Day greeting, and the declaration of WiFi zones were particular to this festival culture. In Kolkata, for example, these things would be considered cheap gimmickry given the concentration of anglophone urban elites who believe they possess 'finer tastes' and would rather seek pure spaces of heritage and tradition. The aspirations are different in different parts of the city, of course, but in Kolkata, there is a longing for nostalgia, simplicity, and the authentic Bengali way of life during festival cultures. In my field visits to small towns, by contrast, I found that the charms of the global aspirational lifestyle were laid out in all corners of the festival space in small towns.
Various aspects of Bombay cinema and even the regional Bengali cinemastars, fashion, music, and so onare present in the festival cultures. Vernacular Hip-hop cultures, which have captured the imagination of young men all over South Asia, has been an incredible cultural force in shaping lower class-caste masculinities. Young men, who are the primary organising army of the festival culture, transform public spaces into a massive party on the streets on festival nights. Especially on the last night of the festival, when the deities are immersed ritually, large floats are created with disco lights and amplifiers blaring Bollywood hip-hop music. These floats are paraded through the town or the city with all young club members drinking and dancing next to and on top of the floats. When women join the dancing, they often do so in groups. Around them, the local men form a human chain, allowing them to enjoy themselves while protecting them from men of other neighourhoods and those who are inebriated beyond control.
In Nadia, the rasher mela dedicated to a Hindu Vaishnavite celebration is understood ubiquitously as a festival for debauchery. From young housewives to young men, most of the town is inebriated for a few nights. Young women drink, smoke and dance in small enclaves protected by the male club-volunteers. Young men dance, get into brawls, harass  women, smoke marijuana, eat jorda, drink alcohol, and consume bhang during these nights. Unlike the upper-class youth of metropolitan centres, they cannot access the nightlife of cities which pervades popular culturethe nightclubs, the alcohol, the fast cars, and the women. But on these nights, these men own the streets of their town. They bring the nightclub to their doorstep. The ludic and the libidinal in the culture of partying are tied together with the fantasy of a global cosmopolitan life of affluence, adventure, and pleasure. The aspirational fantasy of consumption and pleasure makes these festivals attractive to young men who form the main body of organising labour. Through the spectacles and libidinal excesses of the festival time, they break certain civic, familial, and moral rules in a Bakhtinian carnivalesque mode.
For example, during rasher mela of 2018, I was travelling in an auto-rickshaw late at night with my male friend who grew up in Nadia. I was quite inebriated because my male respondents were showing off my drinking skills to their male peers. Another passenger, a young man in his twenties, joined us. Even in my drunken state, I saw that he was visibly shaken. Suddenly, he bent over, held his face in his hands, and started sobbing. My friend asked him if he was okay. He said: 'I just broke someone's face. I was out of my mind'. My friend consoled him and said: 'bhai, rashey o rokom hoy' (brother, these things happen during rash). After a while, he pointed towards me and asked my friend: 'Didi thik ache?' (Is sister alright?). My friend replied: 'She has had too much … not used to it! rashey o rokom hoy!' Women during rash find their intimate spaces of transgression too. Putul and Mangala (names changed) are local women who invited me to their drinking party with the wives and sisters of my male respondents at home while the men were out later in the evening. Putul, a traditional stay-at-home mother likes to drink during the rash week. Her breastfeeding boy 'is very sleepy the next day' she laughed! Disgruntlements against families, aspirations, adventures and misadventures of their youththese conversations flowed as the binge-drinking continued. As the night wore on, and empty bottles of Coca-Cola rolled on the floor next to open bags of potato chips and Old Monk Rum, some of the ladies fell asleep. At one point in the night, I woke up and saw Mangala's husband carry her out of the room where Putul and the others Figure 18. On the right building, a sleek looking white man's image advertising Paris Tailors. had fallen asleep. She was still complaining about something imperceptibly when her husband carried her out and one of her sandals dropped on the floor. I found a blanket, curled up, and went back to sleep next to Putul. McDermott (2011) writes about the competitiveness, pomp, and nostalgia in Bengali festivals such: Revelry, rivalry, and longing: these three themes are central to my study of the Pūjās in two ways. They 'fit' the material for Durgā and Jagaddhātrī in a positive sense, in that Durgā Pūjā and Jagaddhātrī Pūjā are occasions for the unabashed display of pomp, the exercise of competitiveness, and the expression of nostalgic feeling. By contrast, these have become the main elements of Kālī Pūjā only lately, and only by proximity to and influence from the Durgā model. To be sure, Kālī Pūjā has always been enjoyed as an opportunity for various sorts of entertainment, including gambling, fireworks, and rowdy-ism; rival gangs have expressed their influence through their sponsorship of the Pūjā; and Kālī bhaktas await the festival with an emotive desire. (9) She notes that rowdyism has been a part of Kali puja compared to other festivals.
While Kali puja in Bengal is indeed considered more raucous than others, this is a universal part of all Hindu festivals now, especially due to the increasing political patronage, the inclusion of male cadre as organisers, and the growing allure of partying through popular culture. Contrary to McDermott, I argue that the Kali puja of Barasat and Pandua, two small towns in Hooghly are not different from other pujas in any way. Compared to Durga puja in Kolkata for example, it is smaller only in scale. Durga puja is a five-day affair based on ritual factors, but the ritual aspect of Kali puja only covers one night whereas that of Saraswati and Kartick take place for a few hours in the morning. The towns pick a locally favoured deity -Kali, Kartick, or Saraswatiwith the aim to build a unique five-day festival that will draw crowds from all neighbouring regions.
Festivals or utsabs are cultural performances marked by conviviality, dynamic rituals, play, feasts, carnivals, spontaneity, liminality and disorder in tandem with order and rules, as several scholars have demonstrated (Hüsken and Michaels 2013). The festival arena, as this thematic issue shows, is a site of negotiations between different groups of people (Teeuwen, Sen, and Rots 2023). I argue that these small-town festival cultures show how working-class, lower caste men claim public spaces for a limited period to break rules and engage in a play of aspirations. This case also throws light on a gap in the study of Hinduism. I argue that in order to understand contemporary lived Hinduism, we have to look at the politics of neoliberal aspiration and the symbolic function of other arenas which have captured the cultural zeitgeist -Bollywood, Hollywood, hip hop, K-pop, social media like TikTok and so on. These ludic and libidinal aspectsotherwise confined to forbidden spacesare allowed in the permissive spaces for pageantry in popular Hinduism (Figures 19 and 20).

Piety: the riddle of the two goddesses
Given my account so far, one might wonder if the so-called Hindu festival is all about political patronage and play. Where is the Hindu deity in all this? The spectacle, pageantry, and politics have inspired much popular discourse on the lack of religiosity among Bengali Hindus. Even in academic discourse, there is a tendency to argue for a secularisation of the festival (Rodrigues 2018). It is a tempting argument even in small-town festivals because in many cases, the arena for ritual worship, which is traditionally located in the most prominent area, in front of the central deity's image, is absent or put aside in a corner. Even though the spectacular image of the deity is always the most prominent, placed at the core of the structure that visitors are led to, it is not treated ritually. Instead, a smaller, ritually appropriate image is either placed in a corner, or secluded in the clubhouse (the permanent meeting place of the local club) far away from the pandal site. Elsewhere, I write in detail about the function of these dual images (Sen 2021).
In some cases, the priests refuse to worship these spectacular images because they are not made of unfired clay; in other cases, they find the style too outlandish to inspire any 'serious' devotion. In such cases, a humble unfired clay image is placed nondescriptly in the interest of ritual propriety in addition to the spectacular image in the sanctum sanctorum. The thousands of visitors to the pandal engage in ritual gazing or darshan with  the larger, more spectacular image, barely even noticing the small image. But it is the small image which is the focus of the ritual practitioner and some devotees (mostly women). In many cases, this space of karmakanda (ritual priestly worship) is sometimes banished out of the pandal in the interest of unencumbered display, as I write about in detail elsewhere (Sen 2018). It is increasingly common in the Saraswati puja of Magra, where the pandal houses the spectacular goddess, whereas the karmakanda takes place away from the pandal in the clubhouse, where the smaller image is placed. Irrespective of how far or how small the space for karmakanda, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single example where the karmakanda is completely absent.
In addition, local Hindu residents visit the pandal site to 'give puja' to ensure the wellbeing of their families. Typically, married women of families bring a box of sweets and flowers as offering to the deity. The Brahmin priest uses their name and gotra (castebased ritual marker) and offers the flowers and sweets to the deity. Once they have been blessed, they are returned to the women as prasad. During the ritually appointed time, the community gathers in the pandal in front of the deity to offer anjali (lit. offering). The priest recites mantras from the scripture meant for particular deities one line at a time while the crowd repeats the words. At the end of the mantra, the crowd throws the flowers at the deity. The priest sprinkles water from the holy river Gangacalled shantijol or the water of peaceas the crowd bow their heads in pranam. Even the most innovative of deities and the most spectacular of pandals continue with these proceedings for the local people. During these hours, the crowds are sparse because people choose to stay in their neighbourhood and offer devotion to the deity in their local club. This can be challenging, however, with an innovated deity. For example, Bharat Mata or the nation goddess has been introduced as a novel deity in Bansberiya during the Kartick puja festival. Unlike ancient Hindu deities, there are no scriptures dedicated to her. I asked a priest who was worshipping this image what mantras he was reciting. Was there a ritual manual for Bharat Mata? He said, 'When you worship Brahma (an important Hindu deity) you worship everyone. Ma (the goddess) knows that I am worshipping her. I don't need any ritual manual for her to accept my prayer.' These are ways of negotiating the demand for innovation with the need for continuing traditional practices of devotion.
The idea that the utsab has moved beyond religiosity to become all about revelry is not true. It is decidedly a Hindu festival with which the Hindu majority has deep bonds of tradition, nostalgia, and piety. The practices of devotion persist within the increasingly transgressive spaces of revelry. The smaller image is a way of respecting the Brahminical or priestly caste principles while fulfilling the goal of novelty and spectacle. The smaller image, I argue, shows us the place of Bengali Hindu religiosity and the shrinking-yetinviolable presence of Brahminical principles. If the festival cultures of Bengal had become entirely secularised spaces for the play of political power and partying, this smaller image would have become redundant. But the festival culture is not one or the other; it is a dynamic and sometimes volatile cohabitation of both these impulses. As the festival morphs into an industry catering to uncontrolled pleasures and consumption, it is nonetheless marked by almost invisible Brahminical rituals around which the affective, political and libidinal ties of a community to this festival are played out (Figures 21 and 22).

Conclusion
The article has shown how the burgeoning Hindu festivals in West Bengal can be understood as a dynamic interplay of political patronage, play as rivalry and revelry, and finally piety. It has demonstrated how the concept of utsab instead of puja is employed by the political leadership to appease the Hindu majority, while ostensibly signalling towards Hindu-Muslim harmony and inclusivity. In addition, it argues that the need for decentralisation and fair distribution of resources between the metropolis and the rest of the state is expressed through festival rivalries. Furthermore, the article has explored the place of popular culture and aspirations towards a global urban lifestyle in the spaces of libidinal pleasures and pageantry in the festival. Finally, the article shows the role of devotion and Brahminical or priestly caste doctrine in the festival.
One of the areas thrown up in this discussion, which could not be explored in detail, is the role of Bombay cinema or Bollywood in contemporary lived Hinduism. Narratives, fashion, music, and styles of masculinity and femininity from Bombay cinema are an important component of the festivals, particularly for young men and women. In fact, in many areas of suburban and small-town West Bengal (and I suspect in other regions of India), streets and alleys in neighbourhoods are transformed into makeshift nightclubs with disco lights and high-end music systems for the final immersion day of the festival. Elders of the neighbourhoods believe that partying is the main motivation of the young men organising these festivals. Yet the role of partying, alcohol and drug consumption, hip-hop music, and Bombay cinema in mainstream Hindu festivals is an overlooked subject in the study of Hinduism.
The other question that needs to be explored further is the role of masculinity in the organisation and upkeep of festivals. On one hand, the youth perform a transgressive 'hip hopper' masculinity in the spaces of revelry and inebriation. Yet on the other side, they also act as protectors of their women and neighbourhood in relation to other 'rowdy' men on festival nights. The interplay between global and local styles of masculinity, and that between transgressive and protective forms of masculinity characterises the way the revelers act as men. The protection and control of women, while allowing spaces of revelry and forbidden behaviour for them, is also an interesting dynamic of the gendered relations within these festival cultures.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Moumita Sen is an associate professor of culture studies at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society. She leads the European Research Council funded 'Political Deification: Theorising from Asia' and the Norwegian Research Council funded 'Mythopolitics in South Asia' and is a founder member of 'Theory from the Margins'.

Funding
This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd: [Grant Number 303378].