A Bengal town at grave risk of land subsidence has become the focus of a prominent Durga Puja in south Calcutta.
Theme-maker Raju Sarkar has transformed the Thakurpukur State Bank Park Sarbojanin pandal into a working colliery.
Until last week, workers were busy crushing real chunks of coal and loading them into wicker baskets balanced on the heads of life-size miner statues.
The installation spotlights Raniganj, the historic birthplace of Indian coal mining, where operations began in 1774.
“Raniganj is a disaster waiting to happen,” said Sanjoy Majumdar, the Puja committee secretary.
“Decades of relentless underground extraction, unscientific mining practices and a vast network of abandoned shafts have left the entire region vulnerable to land subsidence. Our artist even visited the mines to ground this theme in reality,” he said.
“We flip a switch, and our appliances run, but we rarely think about how that fuel is extracted from the depths of the earth or the harsh realities of the people who dig it out,” Sarkar said.
The theme resonates particularly strongly in Bengal, where coal accounts for roughly 80% of the state’s total installed power capacity.
Sarkar had been planning the project for two years. Four months ago, he and a few committee members secured special permission from mining authorities to visit an operational colliery in Kajora.
“You have to descend about 450 feet to reach the reserves, and we had to sign a liability bond just to go down,” he recalled.
“Once the daylight vanishes, it’s a completely different world — hot, suffocating and pitch-black if not for the beam of your headlamp,” he added.
Reflecting the claustrophobic reality of a mine, the pandal is deliberately dark and grim. Visitors are greeted by a stark corrugated-tin façade bearing the words “Welcome to Bengal Colliery”, alongside a sobering reminder: “The most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner.”
Inside, rusted walls trace the history of Bengal’s coal mining industry. A prominent section features Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, who in 1832 bought a bankrupt mine in Raniganj’s Narayankuri village from the British firm Alexander & Company.
Through his enterprise, Carr, Tagore & Co., he modernised the infrastructure and built a historic riverside shipping jetty on the Damodar to transport coal downstream by steamboat. Although Tagore died before the jetty’s completion, the coal from the region went on to power eastern India’s first steam engines when the Raniganj extension railway line opened on February 3, 1855.
The upper tier of the two-storeyed installation features railway wagons parked on either side. In the background, a glowing, air-conditioned city skyline contrasts with cramped tin sheds in the foreground, representing the miners’ homes. The juxtaposition highlights the gulf between urban comfort and the harsh realities of coal mining.
For miners’ families, the threat of cave-ins, toxic gas pockets and sudden water ingress means living with constant anxiety, never knowing whether their loved ones will return from work.
A painted mural of a woman carrying coal gives a human face to an otherwise impersonal industrial process.
Visitors then descend a dimly lit ramp lined with newspaper clippings about past mining tragedies, leading to a basement at street level.
A poignant detail along the ramp is a wooden thakurer singhasan (altar), symbolising the prayer miners offer for their safety before descending into the depths.
At the end of the tunnel, beyond rows of static figures carrying real coal, stands the goddess. Deep inside the artificial colliery, Durga is reimagined as a miner, holding a pickaxe and a wicker basket. Her divinity is signalled by her third eye, while her remaining hands are clustered behind her to form her crown.
“I always try to look for subjects from different corners of Bengal,” Sarkar said, noting that last year’s theme focused on the archaeological site of Moghalmari in West Midnapore.
“This year, I wanted to shine a light on the perils of illegal mining, where excavated gaps are left dangerously unfilled, and pay tribute to the hapless lives of our miners,” he added.