‘Sindoor Khela’: This ritual centred around women has found a place in Indian pop culture

The fifth day, on Vijaya Dashami, after the darpan visarjan, the symbolic immersion of the Goddess, marks the end of the textual rituals. Thereafter begin the rituals of baran and sindoor khela, which fall within the female dominion. Communities of women bid adieu to Uma as she heads back to the Kailash by applying vermillion on the parting of her hair. They wave an oil lamp, and feed her sweets and paan (betel leaf), with a prayer for safety and prosperity—not just for the divine daughter but for their mortal families as well. After the baran, they apply vermillion to each other as well. Most married women also wear laal pere shada sharee (white sarees with red border), the colours considered synonymous with the Bengali woman in popular culture. The image of women, smeared with vermillion and dancing the beats of the dhaak makes for a striking visual, and one that has captured the imagination of artists, filmmakers and writers.

Interestingly, sindoor khela does not find mention in any Brahminical textual treatise or codes that guide this five-day worship of the Goddess. Nor do scholars find any documented point of origin of the ritual. Prominent Bengali polymath, Jogesh Ch Ray Vidyanidhi (1866-1934), provides a detailed analysis of rituals and origin of Durga Puja or Sharadutsav (autumnal festival) in his work Puja-Parbon. He includes textually codified rituals and deshachaar/kulachaar, or rituals emerging from local/family practices. While he mentions dancing and feasting on Vijaya Dashami, sindoor khela finds no mention in his work. It is possible that he overlooked the rituals that are considered ‘streeachaar’, or rituals made and performed by women.

A quick search on the internet yields that sindoor khela originated anytime between 200 to 400 years ago in the Durga Puja rituals observed by the land owning families of Bengal. As the festival gained prominence, and became central to the sense of community-building in colonial Bengal, the ritual was probably devised by women of these families. It could have been a way of bringing the female community together and extending the Vijaya Dashami festivities alongside the male-dominated rituals of navamir khaed and bhashaner naachh (dancing at the immersion procession).

Today, this public display of devotion and ecstasy has come to be associated with the worship of the Mother Goddess. According to multiple scholars, the origins of Durga Puja are very closely related to the Kumari Osa in Sambalpur, Odisha. Anthropologist, archaeologist and linguist, B.C. Mazumdar, writes in his seminal essay ‘Durga: Her Origin and History’ (1906) that Kulta, Dunal, and Sud communities of Sambalpur, celebrate the festival of Kumari-Osa on the eighth and ninth day of the dark fortnight in the lunar month of Asvina. It is a festival of the maidens for the maiden Goddess, where they fashion the idol and smear it with vermillion. At the end of the two days, the idol is then immersed with much fan-fare and dancing on the tenth day of the worship. This however, unlike the sindoor khela of Bengal, is not limited to married women, or application of sindoor before immersion.

It appears that the patriarchal barriers eased only slightly to give agency to married women of Bengal to celebrate a ritual that has come to symbolise familial bliss. Much like the warrior Goddess being brought into the role of a grahini, or a married woman, looking after her four children. This iconography of Durga with her family emerges only around the 12th century CE. Historians like Rakhal Das Banerji (1885-1930), Jitendra Nath Banerjea (1895-1966), and Muhammad Enamul Haq (1902-1982) have failed to find any ancient sculpture of Durga with all her four children.

With rising call for women empowerment, it is likely that the inclusion of sindoor khela as a community ritual outside of the family confines in community Durga Pujas started much later. Even with its origins in patriarchy, it is remarkable that the ritual, with no roots in texts, stands as a visible stronghold of women. What stands out is that even in rituals, often considered too sacred to be questioned or changed, sindoor khela has shown the aspiration to evolve as an egalitarian, inclusive practice, challenging Brahminical patriarchy.

In 2017, a newspaper campaign urged people to include widows, transgenders, and single mothers in sindoor khela. The campaign found home in other cities too in the years that followed. In recent years, elderly widows have been shown participating in rituals of baran and sindoor khela in mainstream Bengali soaps like Jol Thoi Thoi Bhalobasha. In most urban Durga Puja pandals today, sindoor khela has grown to include women and men beyond their marital status, with the exception of applying sindoor on the parting of the hair of married women, which is still done only by other married women or the husband.

Lalitha Sahasranam from the Brahmanda Purana (4-6th century CE) mentions applying of sindoor on Lalita or the Mother Goddess and associates it with power. The first mention of sindoor in the context of a wedding is found in the Shiva Purana (10-11th century CE), where women are said to have thrown vermillion on Shiva after the wedding. As Indologist Nrishingha Prasad Bhaduri observes, sindoor daan has no reference in any Vedic or Puranic texts as a confirmation of marriage.

As much as patriarchal orthodoxy might continue to enforce the connection between sindoor and a woman’s marital status, texts tell us that there is nothing that stops it from being a symbol of feminine power, removed from marital status. The ritual seems to have evolved just as the portrayal of the Goddess has transformed—with a familial role imposed on her but firmly still holding on to her unbridled warrior identity. Much like the modern woman.

Tanushree Bhowmik, an author, food historian and researcher, is the co-founder of Indian Culinary Agenda and ForkTales.