Durga Puja heritage: Sherpur’s Mangalbhaban upholds 130-year tradition

It was around 1895. A person named Mangal Ram Sarkar, along with local dignitaries, established the Sri Sri Mangalbhaban Puja Mandap. The Durga Puja festival has been organised there for 130 years.

The organisers claim that the event was only stopped once during the Liberation War in 1971.

The puja mandap is located in Palpara in the Khalbhanga area of Nalitabari town in Sherpur. Devotees and visitors are particularly attracted to this traditional and ancient puja mandap in the district. Every year, local culture is given priority in the puja mandap in accordance with tradition.

According to the organising committee, although the Durga Puja was organised on a small scale at its start in 1895, over time it began to be held on a larger scale. Since its establishment, its organisation was stopped only once. Apart from that, Durga Puja has been organised there with great fanfare every year.

From morning till night, the puja mandap is crowded with devotees and visitors of various age groups. The largest crowd is seen after the afternoon.

This correspondent talked to Suborno Paul, 28, a visitor there on Monday.

He said, “We come to this mandap for at least one day during the Puja. The Puja feels incomplete without having the prasad here. There is a touch of Bengali tradition here.”

At the same time, Rony Bardhan, 22, came with his friends to see the pratima (idol). He also reiterated the sentiment of incompleteness “without having prasad from here on the afternoon of Nabami Puja”.

Housewife Beauty Rani Saha, 50, informed this correspondent that it has been 30 years since her marriage in Nalitabari. Every year, she comes to this mandap with her family. No matter how many places they go, the Puja tour is not complete unless they come here. “Everyone in the family has a great interest in coming to see this Puja.”

To uphold the Bengali tradition, various events including palagan, jatra, and Ram Mangal were organised at the puja mandap every year during Durga Puja, Shubhra Prakash Paul, 28, a fourth-generation member of the organising family, said.

“However, even though the events have changed over time, we are trying to maintain the tradition for the new generation,” he added.

Biswanath Paul, the caretaker of the puja mandap, said that the magazine, Udbodhan, published by the Ramakrishna Mission in India’s Kolkata once mentioned Naliatabari’s Mangalbhaban as the second oldest puja mandap in Bangladesh, with Panchgaon mandap in Sylhet being the oldest.

The president of Mangalbhaban Puja Celebration Committee Gouranga Chandra Paul, expressed hope for successfully organising Durga Puja in the future in the continuation of preserving the 130-year-old tradition.