Kolkata pandal recreates a coal mine and shows Durga as a labourer for its 56th puja

A Durga Puja pandal in Behala, South Kolkata, has been built as an underground coal mine to draw attention to the lives of miners. Thakurpukur SB Park Sarbojanin, which is holding its 56th Durga Puja in 2026, has recreated a colliery for this year's festival, and reports on Friday, October 16, 2026, described visitors walking through a setting meant to show the hardships miners face underground. In a striking choice, the organisers have shown Goddess Durga herself as a labourer, linking the festival's central figure to the working people the theme celebrates.

Kolkata's Durga Puja is one of the world's largest public art events, and in 2021 it was added to UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Each year, community committees choose a theme and commission artists to build pandals that range from replicas of famous buildings to works on social issues. In recent years, many of the most talked-about pandals have used the festival to hold up a mirror to society, taking on subjects such as climate change, migration and the lives of workers.

The SB Park pandal belongs firmly in that tradition. Coal has powered much of India's industry and electricity for generations, and West Bengal has its own long history of coal mining. Yet the people who work underground are rarely seen by the city residents who rely on the power their labour helps produce. By building a mine inside a city neighbourhood, the committee asks visitors to step, for a few minutes, into the world of miners: the darkness, the narrow passages and the physical toil.

Showing Durga as a labourer is the boldest part of the concept. In the traditional image, the Goddess is a warrior queen, armed and triumphant over the demon Mahishasura. Recasting her as a worker can be read as a statement that dignity and strength are found in ordinary people and their work. It also follows a growing practice among theme pandals of reimagining the Goddess in forms that speak to the theme, from a mother figure to a symbol of nature. Such choices are part of what makes Kolkata's pujas an evolving art form rather than a fixed ritual display.

The pandal also shows the scale of craft behind the festival. Theme pujas are built by teams of artisans, carpenters, painters and lighting designers who often work for months before the festival, and many of them come from the same working-class backgrounds that pandals like this one set out to honour.

Short-term: The pandal is expected to draw large crowds in Behala over the main days of the festival, adding to the flow of visitors through South Kolkata's well-known puja clusters.

Long-term: Pandals with social themes help keep public attention on groups that are often overlooked, and they keep the tradition of Durga Puja art fresh and relevant. They also give artists a large public stage to experiment with form and meaning.

Who is affected: Devotees and visitors to Behala and South Kolkata, the artisans and organisers behind the pandal, local residents and traders, and coal-mining communities whose work the theme seeks to honour.

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