Durga Puja makes it to UNESCO’s ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage list’, but it’s not the first. What other Indian symbols are on the coveted list

Durga Puja in Kolkata has been included on UNESCO’s list of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’. The decision was taken at the 16th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The session is being held from December 13 to 18, 2021.

The list is a collection of intangible customs, cultures and elements that help demonstrate the diversity of heritage and raise awareness about its importance. Cultural heritage does not limit itself to monuments and collections of objects but is also the traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants. This includes oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.

The citation for Durga Puja says that it “is seen as the best instance of the public performance of religion and art, and as thriving ground for collaborative artists and designers. The festival is characterized by large-scale installations and pavilions in urban areas, as well as by traditional Bengali drumming and veneration of the goddess. During the event, the divides of class, religion and ethnicities collapse as crowds of spectators walk around to admire the installations.”

While it is a proud moment for the country, this is not the first time that an Indian heritage practice has made it to the list. In fact, Durga Puja is the 14th intangible cultural heritage element from India to have been added to the list.

The 2008 Representative List saw the Sanskrit theatre of Kutiyattam in Kerala, the tradition of Vedic chanting and the Ramlila performance making it to the list.

Kutiyattam is one of India’s oldest living theatrical traditions that originated more than 2,000 years ago. It represents a synthesis of Sanskrit classicism and reflects the local traditions of Kerala. The UNESCO citation for Vedic chanting says that “the value of this tradition lies not only in the rich content of its oral literature but also in the ingenious techniques employed by the Brahmin priests in preserving the texts intact over thousands of years. To ensure that the sound of each word remains unaltered, practitioners are taught from childhood complex recitation techniques that are based on tonal accents, a unique manner of pronouncing each letter and specific speech combinations.”  Ramlila, the citation says, brings the whole population together, without distinction of caste, religion or age. “However, the development of mass media, particularly television soap operas, is leading to a reduction in the audience of the Ramlila plays, which are therefore losing their principal role of bringing people and communities together.”

The 2009 Representative List added Ramman — the religious festival and ritual theatre of the Garhwal — celebrated in late April every year in the twin villages of Saloor-Dungra in Uttarakhand. The festival is held in honour of the tutelary god, Bhumiyal Devta, a local divinity whose temple houses most of the festivities. 

The Representative List of 2010 brought three more elements from India to the list. These were the Chhau dance, the Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan and Mudiyettu, the ritual theatre and dance drama of Kerala. Chhau dance is a tradition from eastern India that enacts episodes from epics, local folklore and abstract themes by male dancers from families of traditional artists. Kalbelia tribe in Rajasthan were professional snake handlers traditionally and their folk songs and dances evoke their former occupation. These are transmitted from generation to generation as a part of an oral tradition for which no texts or training manuals exist. Kerala’s Mudiyettu is a ritual dance drama based on the mythological tale of a battle between the goddess Kali and the demon Darika.

2012 brought in Buddhist chanting of Ladakh and 2013 brought Sankirtana, the ritual singing, drumming and dancing of Manipur, under the ambit of the UNESCO list. 2016 list included the practice of Yoga and the Parsi New Year Novruz. However, Novruz was not exclusively Indian as it is also celebrated across Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Turkey.

The Representative List of 2017 added the “the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims on earth, during which participants bathe or take a dip in a sacred river” — the Kumbh Mela — as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In a land like ours that has thousands of cultural symbols — even if one were to take one symbol per community, tribe or region — there are bound to be many more additions to the list in the coming years.