The Patron Returns: Who Owns Durga Puja When the Money Changes Hands?

Whoever Pays for the Puja Decides Whose Puja It Is In 1757, the

year of Plassey, Raja Nabakrishna Deb held a Durga Puja inside his Shobhabazar mansion. Accounts of that puja record Robert Clive among the guests, there to mark the East India Company's victory and the puja is still called the Company Puja.

The worship took place in the Thakur Dalan, the family's private courtyard. The patron paid, the patron chose the image and the patron decided who came through the gate. This is the pattern behind this year's news. Durga Puja's money has changed hands several times and each time control over the festival changed hands with it.

The Four Owners of One Festival -

The aristocratic house (17th-18th centuries): Bonedi families such as the Sabarna Roy Choudhurys of Barisha, whose puja is traditionally dated to 1610, funded worship as a display of standing. Access was by invitation.

• The neighbourhood (from 1790): Twelve friends in Guptipara pooled public donations and the barowari or community, puja was born. Through Balaram Bose Ghat Road (1910) and Bagbazar Sarbojanin (1919), subscriptions made residents both funders and owners. That ownership is why pandals could become sites of nationalist mobilisation during the freedom struggle.
• The brand (from the mid-1990s): Themed pandals, designed by art-college graduates, needed money that subscriptions could not raise. Banners, gate sponsorships and branded award contests filled the gap, but the committee still hired the artist.
• The direct patron (2026): The Adani Group's Rs 2-crore programme gives Rs 25 lakh to each of eight committees and Rs 10 lakh of each grant goes straight to the artist.

Where the Parallel Breaks and Why That Matters

It would be easy to call 2026 a return to 1757. The comparison does not fully hold. The zamindar owned the courtyard, while today's grant-funded pandal still stands on public ground. One recipient club's official told the paper that Kolkata would never make people pay to enter a pandal, because the puja belongs to everyone.

The parallel holds on a different point: who commissions the artist. Under the barowari model and the sponsorship model, the committee, answerable to the neighbourhood, hired and directed the artist. A grant that pays the artist directly changes that line of control.

The artist now has two patrons and the more generous one is not the neighbourhood. The club also reported a preview show for crowd-free viewing before the inauguration. That is a small echo of the private courtyard: privileged early access, inside a festival that is supposed to be open to all.

The money is not trivial. A British Council study put the festival's 2019 creative economy at Rs 32,377 crore and more than 92% of organisers spend over a fifth of their budgets on artists and artisans. Funding artists directly could strengthen exactly the craft base that UNESCO's 2021 listing recognised.

So the barowari's real legacy was never the subscription receipt. It was the principle that the people who pay can also refuse. UNESCO recognised a festival owned by its neighbourhoods. Whether it stays that way depends less on the size of the grants than on who keeps the right to say no to them.