Presentation Schedule
Emotion, Identity and Tradition: Community Narratives of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Jagadhatri Puja Festival in India (104707)
Session Chair: Swatilekha Sen
This presentation will be live-streamed via Zoom (Online Access)
Wednesday, 13 May 2026 17:00
Session: Session 4
Room: Live-Stream Room 3
Presentation Type: Live-Stream Presentation
– click here to convert to your timezone
The Jagadhatri Puja festival represents a rich and enduring form of intangible cultural heritage yet remains largely understudied within broad research domain cultural heritage studies. With origins traced back to 300 years ago under the zamindari (landlord) system, the festival has gradually transformed from an elite section of society to a community-organized public festival. The city, Chandernagore, reflects an evolving tradition of illumination, moving from hand-held lanterns to contemporary lighting technologies. The festival portrays its ritual expressions and upholds its unique cultural identity through several distinctive cultural elements. The term Jagadhatri, literally "Bearer of the World", symbolizes divine power, where community members collectively perform roles imbued with deep cultural significance. Considering this context, the main objective of this research is to examine how emotions, memory, and cultural pride are transmitted across generations and embedded within cultural practices of the festival thus bridging the academic gap of this research domain. The study employed mixed research methods by adopting a ‘Big Q’ reflexive approach of thematic analysis complemented by sentiment analysis. The findings reveal that community emotions play a crucial role in shaping cultural identity and sustaining heritage continuity. It also demonstrates how Jagadhatri Puja in Chandernagore functions as a living cultural system amid rapid urban change. The research contributes to broader domain on intangible cultural heritage, urban cultural identity, and the emotional geographies of festival traditions in contemporary India.
Authors:
Swatilekha Sen, VIT-AP University, India
Susmita Sengupta, Ravindra Mahavidyalaya, India
Mitali Ghosh, Sambhu Nath College, India
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Swatilekha Sen
Assistant Professor of Geography
VIT-AP University
Environmental humanities, cultural studies, livelihood studies, urban geography
See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress