‘Itu Puja’: A Traditional Culture in Sundarbans and Sustainability

Description

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19539837

Arupa Mandal (Department of Education, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal)

Traditional culture embodies the spiritual essence and serves as a civilizational symbol for a notion, a society or a specific group of people. People maintain their own traditional culture through generations in unchanged form and thus bear their own customs, beliefs, rituals and history. Currently, when the world is facing great challenges against global warming, climate change, and rapid biodiversity loss, all focus is centered on “sustainability”. One of the best remedies for maintaining sustainability is to lightning the valuable Traditional culture. Locals of the world heritage site Sundarbans maintain several traditions where women are an important part. Women maintain various Household worships, like Mangal Chandi Broto, Sitol Sasthi, Ashok Sasthi, Chapra Sasthi, Itu puja, and more like this. Itu Puja is the worship of God Sun and Maa Laxmi, where people pray for well-being, good agricultural production and fertility. The objectives of the study to explore traditional rituals related to Itu puja and find out relations with sustainability, if any. Data collected by individual interviews from local women who are attached to Itu Puja. After thematic analysis, it has been found that traditional rituals related to Itu Puja are linked to environmental, social and economic sustainability.