Bengal’s Kali Puja reflects a history of shared religious practices, with Muslims like the poet Kazi Nazrul Islam contributing devotional songs to the goddess. This story explores how faith and folklore unite communities, even as rising majoritarianism threatens the syncretic harmony that once defined the region.
“Amaar kalo meyer paayer tolay, dekhey jaa aalor nachon / Maa-er roop dekhey dey book petey Shiv, jaar haatey moron-banchon — Look how the light dances beneath my dark-skinned girl’s feet! / Even Shiva, by whose hand we live and die, is besotted by the mother’s beauty!”
Would you believe me if I said some of Bengal’s most famous devotional songs dedicated to the dark-skinned goddess Kali were written by a Muslim man? His name was Kazi Nazrul Islam. In Bengal, he is known by his epithet “Bidrohi Kabi”, or the revolutionary poet. He wrote and composed over 200 devotional songs dedicated to the goddess Kali.
Born in 1899 in Churulia, present-day West Bengal, Nazrul grew up immersed in Islamic religious traditions, jatra pala, or Bengali folk theatre, and the region’s diverse bhakti geeti, or devotional musical cultures. His engagement with Shakta devotionalism was also deeply personal. Under the guidance of Shakta Tantric practitioner Baradacharan Majumdar, he developed an intimate devotional relationship with Kali, composing songs that addressed the goddess with the tenderness, longing, and irreverence characteristic of Bengal’s shyamasangeet or devotional music dedicated to the Goddess, historically worshipped by Bengal’s notorious dacoits, thuggees, and those outside the mainstream Hindu society.
His musical legacy offers a window into a less-acknowledged history of Bengal’s syncretic religious life, where devotional practices have often exceeded the boundaries of institutional religion. This is not simply a romanticised idea of communal harmony. Across rural and urban Bengal, there are several cases of Muslims actively participating in, and sometimes initiating, Kali worship.
In Madhyam Kendua, Malda, a Muslim woman named Shephali Bibi has organised an annual Kali Puja since the 1980s. According to local accounts, she began the puja after experiencing a dream in which the goddess promised to cure her illness. Today, the celebration draws thousands of devotees from both communities. In Manikchak, Malda, Muslims once outnumbered Hindus on the organising committee of a Kali Pujo held in a temple neighbouring a mosque. Meanwhile, in Bhanrkata, Birbhum, a century-old Kali Puja reportedly originated with a Muslim farmer, Karim Sheikh, who discovered an idol in his granary following a dream. Muslim artisans have continued to make hair, ornaments, and weapons for the goddess’s idol for generations.
These practices belong to a wider history of shared folk religiosity in Bengal, also evident in the worship of Bonbibi in the Sundarbans. They do not necessarily represent a wholesale crossing of theological boundaries, but reveal how faith, folklore and community relationships coexist in Bengali life. But as religious fault lines deepen and rising majoritarianism threatens the syncretism once commonplace throughout Bengal, we risk losing the social harmony that once resulted in a figure like Kazi Nazrul Islam, whose devotional songs transcended religious boundaries and spoke to the universality of faith in Bengal that made Kali a goddess for all.
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