Arts and artisanal heritage

Bonbibir PalaRitual

An all-night dramatised recitation of the Bonbibi Johuranama, staged in a village yard on a bare platform with harmonium, dhol and kartal. It runs from Bonbibi's arrival in the forest through the Dukhey episode to the settlement with Dakshin Rai, and the audience knows every line. Performers are not professionals; the same people go into the forest the next week.

Performed by: Village troupes, with men playing all roles including Bonbibi. Occasion: Bonbibi's puja in Magh, and at village vows fulfilled

Jhumur and village dance at the melasFolk

Song-and-dance troupes brought in from the mainland for the fair season, playing to island audiences. The form is not local; the market for it is.

Performed by: Travelling troupes. Occasion: Winter fairs in the polder belt

Dhunuchi naachRitual

Danced with an earthen censer of burning coconut fibre, as everywhere in the delta. At the forest shrines the same censer is used to smoke the image before a party leaves for the forest.

Performed by: Anyone at the pandal. Occasion: Durga Puja and Bonbibi puja arati

Bonbibi Johuranama recitation

The Bonbibi narrative sung in dwipadi payar, the two-line Bengali metre used for puthi literature, in a chanting delivery closer to recitation than to song. The text is Bengali but is thick with Perso-Arabic vocabulary, and it opens in the manner of a Muslim devotional text before proceeding to a puja.

Bhatiyali

The boatman's free-rhythm song of the lower delta, sung here on tidal water rather than on a current. The repertoire is shared with the delta upriver; the working conditions are not, since a tidal creek reverses and a river does not.

Jatra and shrine songs of Gazi and Manasa

Songs to Gazi Pir, a forest and cattle saint with a following on both sides of the religious line, and to Manasa, the snake goddess — two older cults that share the same audience as Bonbibi and are performed at the same fairs.

Kirtan and Nam gaan

Vaishnava congregational singing brought down from Nadia by settling families, sung in the polder villages at night through the winter. It coexists with the Bonbibi cult without any attempt to reconcile the two.

Bonbibir Pala

The region's central theatrical form, and unusual in that its script is a printed devotional text rather than a stage play. Staging is minimal — a mat, a backdrop, a harmonium — and the performance is understood as an act of worship that also entertains, which is why it can run until dawn.

Jatra companies on tour

Professional jatra troupes from the Chitpur circuit reach the island market towns in the winter season, playing on temporary platforms. For many islands this is the only professional performance of the year.

Gazir Pat

A scroll-painting performance in which a singer unrolls a painted cloth episode by episode while narrating the exploits of Gazi Pir, who is shown riding a tiger. It is the closest visual antecedent to the Bonbibi imagery and belongs to the same Hindu–Muslim shared devotional field.

Bonbibi and Dakshin Rai images South 24 Parganas

A distinct iconographic set made by village modellers: Bonbibi in Muslim dress, often on a tiger, with her brother Shah Jangali, the boy Dukhey, and Dakshin Rai as a moustached man or a tiger-headed figure. The images are not immersed like Durga; they are left in the shrine hut until the weather takes them.

Material: Unfired river clay, straw and bamboo. Technique: Modelled over a straw core and painted; made new for each puja and left at the shrine to weather.

Honey and beeswax processing GI registered South and North 24 Parganas

The forest's oldest licensed industry. Honey is graded by the flower it came from, khalisha being the lightest and most valued, and Sundarban Honey received a registered geographical indication on the Indian side in 2024. Wax was historically the more profitable half of the collection.

Material: Wild comb of the giant rock bee. Technique: Comb cut in the forest, drained and strained; wax rendered separately.

Boat building Across the islands, with yards at Canning, Gosaba and Namkhana

Every island economy rests on a boat that a local yard built. The characteristic small craft is the bhutbhuti, named for the noise its single-cylinder irrigation engine makes, and it is the region's bus, ambulance and goods lorry.

Material: Sal and local timber, with plank-on-frame construction. Technique: Built by eye and by template rather than to a drawing; the bhutbhuti is a hull with a pump engine in it.

Golpata thatch and mat work Across the islands

Roofing from a mangrove palm, cut in a controlled season under permit. A golpata roof outlasts a straw one in salt air, which is why it is worth a licence.

Material: Nypa palm fronds cut on licence from the forest. Technique: Fronds split, dried and lashed in overlapping courses onto a bamboo frame.

Net and trap making Across the islands

Made and repaired at home, mostly by women, and the single largest item of household capital in a fishing family. The fine-mesh net used for prawn seed is the most controversial object in the region's economy.

Material: Nylon and cotton twine, bamboo and cane. Technique: Hand-knotted nets and woven creek traps; crab traps are baited and set on the falling tide.

Shola and pith work for the shrine South 24 Parganas

The same craft that dresses a Durga idol upriver supplies the crowns and backdrops for Bonbibi's image, made in the polder villages rather than bought in.

Material: Shola pith. Technique: Cut into sheets and assembled into crowns and backdrops without glue in the older work.