Kolkata, August 31, 2026 : The Manicktala Chaltabagan Lohapatty Durga Puja Committee today announced ‘Nishan — The Mark’ as the theme of its 84th Durga Puja along with the release of a especially composed musical theme by Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and the soon-to-be launched Durga Puja Connect app, a global digital initiative that will carry Durga Puja — inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021 — to devotees, organisers, the diaspora and admirers across the world.
Elders of the Ramnami Samaj of Chhattisgarh — a devotional community whose members inscribe the name of Ram across their bodies, a practice that began in the 1890s as a peaceful answer to being denied entry at the temple door — were present as guests of honour.
The announcements were made by the Chairman of Chaltabagan Durga Puja, Sundeep Bhutoria, at a press conference in Kolkata in the presence of Grammy Award winner and Padma Bhushan Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Shri Shishir Bajoria and other dignitaries.
“The theme, the music, the presence of the Ramnami Samaj and Durga Puja Connect app are not separate announcements but one idea. A celebration of faith, sacred inscriptions and sounds and a global bridge linking devotees worldwide. Nishan is the mark that is written; the music composition is the audible mark; the Ramnami Samaj are the living proof that a mark, faithfully inscribed, can outlast everything that was used to exclude the people who carry it and the app is the modern mark of technology,” said Sundeep Bhutoria.
The 2026 Puja theme Nishan has been conceived by artist Aditi Chakraborty, whose work continues to centre on communities at the margins of the national picture.
Grammy Award winner and Padma Bhushan recipient Pt.Vishwa Mohan Bhatt released a special musical composition created for the theme. “When the committee described this theme to me, I recognised it at once as `nishan and naad’. A raga is also a mark — you cannot see it, but it is inscribed, passed from teacher to student, carried for a lifetime. The Ramnamis write the name on the skin; we write it in the air with naad (musical sound),” said Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt.
Durga Puja Connect app is a mobile-first digital platform that links the devotee standing before the pandal with a global audience of admirers and the diaspora. Built around three actions — Discover, Participate and Showcase — it allows users anywhere in the world to explore pujas and the stories behind them, to join a living virtual community that crosses borders, and to pin themselves on a worldwide devotee map by saying, simply, ‘I’m here with Chaltabagan’.
“Chaltabagan has never been content to build a pandal; they try to build an idea and then invite the city to walk through it. Durga Puja does not belong to one street, one city or even one country any more. It is celebrated wherever Bengalis and friends of Bengal have made a home. Durga Puja Connect is our attempt to give that scattered celebration a single address — so that a family in Kolkata, a student in Berlin and a doctor in New Jersey can stand, for a few days each autumn, in the same room,” said Shishir Bajoria, Core Team, BJP Videsh Vibhag; State Executive, BJP West Bengal; President, Inauguration Committee 2026, Chaltabagan Durga Puja.
