In the heart of Kolkata, inside the red-bricked walls of the Presidency Correctional Facility, Durga Puja carries a story not draped in festoons but forged in shackles. Long before the city’s pandals dazzled with lights and celebrity endorsements, a prisoner in khadi robes turned a colonial jail into a sanctum. His name— Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. His rebellion— Durga Puja behind bars.
It was 1940. Bose, incarcerated by the British, refused to let steel bars chain the spirit of a nation. Alongside fellow inmates, he organised a Durga Puja in the jail’s austere courtyard. To the untrained eye, it was ritual. To the revolutionaries, it was resistance. The drums of the Sandhipuja, as his comrade Narendranarayan Chakraborty later recalled, were less about conch shells and more about solidarity. In those chants, faith mingled with fire for freedom.
Yet, the seeds of this audacious act had sprouted earlier. In 1925, imprisoned in Mandalay Jail, Burma, Bose had already waged a war of faith against the colonial jail authorities. Christians could pray, criminals could worship, but revolutionaries? Denied. Bose fought till Durga’s image was allowed into the fortress of oppression. That moment wasn’t just a puja— it was a declaration: devotion too could be defiance.
“Durga Puja in jail was never merely ritual,” asserts Dr Arup Mitra, Associate Professor at Jaipuria College, adding, “It was a coded protest, a way of awakening nationalist consciousness under the British gaze.”
Mitra points to Netaji’s footprints across puja grounds— from the Shimla Byayam Samiti to Bagbazar in the late 1930s — where Bose often slipped seamlessly into the role of organiser or secretary. His faith was not separate from politics; it was interlaced.
Still, historians disagree. Dr Susnata Das of Rabindra Bharati University offers a counterview: “Bose was at heart a religious man. His puja inside the Presidency Jail reflected personal devotion more than political calculus.” Perhaps it was both. Perhaps for Bose, worship was another vocabulary for struggle.
Fast-forward to the present, and the festival he seeded in confinement has transformed into one of Kolkata’s most unusual Durga Pujas. No glitzy sponsorships, no midnight idol-visiting crowds. Here, inmates hammer bamboo frames, sculpt idols, paint pandals with themes that mirror their realities— Women’s Literacy and Health (2023), Liberation (2024) and this year’s Unity in Diversity. Inside these walls, prisoners speak through brushes and clay, turning pain into pageantry.
And yes, the feast remains. Guards whisper of the annual menu— fried rice, biryani, mutton, fish, luchi, sweets. The celebration, however temporary, chips away at monotony.
What began as an act of rebellion under colonial rule has evolved into a ritual of rehabilitation. Netaji’s Durga Puja is no longer just about divine strength; it is about human dignity. It stitches prisoners back into society, reminding them — and us — that freedom is not just political. It is spiritual, cultural and deeply personal.
Eighty-five years have passed since Bose smuggled a goddess into prison, but her message roars still— unity, strength and unyielding confidence. Inside the Presidency Jail, the bars remain, but for a few days each year, the Goddess walks free.
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