Jagaddhatri Puja 2026: Chandannagar and Krishnanagar

Chandannagar. The old French town on the Hooghly has its Strand and its church, but in November the name means something else: lights, and a goddess on a lion with an elephant under its paws, sitting very still while the whole town moves around her.

Eleven days after Kali Puja, Bengal brings the goddess back in a calmer form. Kali's night is dark and loud. Jagaddhatri's name means the one who holds the world, and she is shown doing exactly that: seated, four-armed, unhurried. The two towns that have made her their own, Chandannagar on the Hooghly and Krishnanagar in Nadia, keep her in very different ways. And whether she began with the king or long before him is still argued over.

When is Jagaddhatri Puja in 2026?

Thursday 19 November 2026, for the main puja on Navami. Drikpanchang's Kolkata page gives the day, and the Bisuddha Siddhanta panjika lists it too, with Saptami (Mon 16 Nov) and Ashtami (Tue 17 Nov) for pujas that start on Saptami. The tithi itself is almost all on Wednesday: Navami begins at 6.04 am on 18 November and ends at 7.05 am on 19 November. Wednesday's sunrise, at 5.51 am, comes while Ashtami is still running, by thirteen minutes. Thursday's, at 5.52 am by drikpanchang's panchang for the day, comes during Navami. The Bisuddha page names the rule, the one that goes by sunrise, and so a Navami with about an hour of daylight left in it takes the whole day.

Wikipedia's page on the festival says some places keep it for several days and others on Navami alone. Chandannagar keeps the long version, and its Central Committee fixes the days and the procession each year. This year's schedule is not out yet.

Who was first: the king or the older temples

The story you will hear in Krishnanagar is a good one. Raja Krishnachandra of Nadia, held by Nawab Alivardi Khan over unpaid revenue, was released on Vijaya Dashami, too late for Durga Puja at home. Grieving on the way back, he saw the goddess in another form, and began her worship in his capital. Wikipedia tells it as the popular account, and Bengali Wikipedia adds the sum the Nawab demanded, twelve lakh rupees.

Then the same pages turn it round, with older witnesses. Shulapani's Kalaviveka, written some time between 1375 and 1460, already mentions her puja, in the month of Kartik. A temple of Jagaddhatri at Somra in Hooghly dates from 1621. Santipur's Jaleshwar temple of 1665 and Raghaveshwar temple of 1669 already carry the goddess in the sanctum and on their walls. So Krishnachandra did not invent her. What he did, in the eighteenth century, was make her the goddess of a town.

Krishnachandra did not invent her. He made her the goddess of a town.

Krishnanagar: the old woman of Chashapara

In 1772, the year both Wikipedias give, Krishnachandra's own subjects in Chashapara started a Jagaddhatri Puja of their own, copying the palace. Bengali Wikipedia says the local milkmen paid for it out of their milk money, that it began as a ghat and a painted pot rather than an image, and that Gobinda Ghosh gave it a full image around 1790. Today it is called Buri Maa, the old mother, and English Wikipedia names it the most popular Jagaddhatri in the town, and names Choto Maa of Kathalpota, Mejo Maa of College Street and Maa Jaleswari of Malopara as also very famous.

We like that in a king's town, Buri Maa's puja was paid for not by the palace but by Chashapara's milkmen. It is how Bengal's festivals have always grown: from the palace outward, until the lane owns it.

Chandannagar: a French town's goddess

Chandannagar was French until the middle of the last century. Its Wikipedia page records the referendum of 1949, in which the town voted to join India, the handover of 1950 and its merger with West Bengal on 2 October 1954. English Wikipedia puts the look of the town's festival down to the French and the Bengalis working it out together.

What the town is known for now is scale and light. Bengali Wikipedia puts the pujas recognised by the Central Committee at more than three hundred, and says that each year 75 to 80 of them are chosen by lottery to join the procession. Wikipedia writes of that procession's lighting, and it is what people travel for.

The mother as she was

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay gave Jagaddhatri a famous line, and it is not in a hymn. In Anandamath, the novel that gave India Vande Mataram, a band of ascetics worship the motherland in three images. Jagaddhatri is the mother as she was. Kali is the mother as she is now. Durga is the mother as she will be. Wikipedia's page on the goddess sets it out.

Read the festival calendar with that in your head and it makes a strange kind of sense. Durga comes in October with all her promise. Kali comes on the darkest night, as things are. And eleven days later, when the air has turned and the paddy is in, Bengal remembers a mother who simply held the world steady. On Jagaddhatri's day, in the house at Jayrambati where Sarada Devi was born, the puja her mother first held, in 1877 by Bengali Wikipedia's account (Sarada Devi's biographer was not sure of the year), is still kept, now by the Ramakrishna Mission.

▶1:03:54Play: Rokkhakortri Jagaddhatri

Rokkhakortri Jagaddhatri

Akashvani Kolkata

A historical horror and murder mystery with the goddess in its title, from the YouTube channel Akashvani Kolkata. 1 hour 4 minutes.

▶ Play hereWatch on YouTube · Akashvani Kolkata

For the songs, the Pujo mood carries through from October. If you missed the two festivals before this one, here is Kali Puja 2026, and Bhai Phota three days after it.

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