The Durga Puja has changed a lot, but as art historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta says, it has always been political. The puja was a symbol of resistance against the British, the community puja then became a way for post-Partition refugees to come together in celebration, during the Left’s three decades in charge of Bengal, the communist parties knew better than to meddle with the festival. Under Mamata Banerjee’s rule, the Pujo received enormous fillip and was transformed into even more of an icon for the city. Banerjee brought in a Pujo carnival, but organising clubs got lakhs from the government in a move that paved the way for serious concerns of corruption.A new government, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is in charge now. In the months leading up to the Pujo, religious leaders have tried to speak of the kind of food that cannot be eaten, government representatives have spoken on the kind of words that can be used to describe the festival and the kind of idols that can and cannot be created by artisans.At the 150-year-old Tagore Palace in north Kolkata’s Pathuriaghata, Tagore family scion – dance exponent and scholar Souraja Tagore – has a different way of celebrating the festival. She tells The Wire’s news editor Soumashree Sarkar why that is important.