Durga Puja to be central theme of Totally Thames Festival in UK

Kolkata: Durga Puja will be the central theme of the exhibition on Bengal in the Totally Thames Festival in UK, that witnesses a turnout of around 12.5 lakh tourists from all over the world. It will help in attracting tourists to Bengal.

Two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) have been signed between the Bengal government and the British Council on Friday, in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. One of the MoUs is for educational and cultural cooperation, while the second one has a focus on the tourism sector. Amit Mitra, the state Finance minister, Chief Secretary Malay De, Home secretary Atri Bhattacharya, who is also the Principal Secretary of the Tourism department and Roshni Sen, Principal Secretary, Technical Education and Training department, were present in the meeting.

Bhattacharya and Alan Gammell OBE, Director of British Council in India, signed the MoU for educational and cultural cooperation between Britain and Bengal. Bhattacharya signed the other MoU with Debanjan Chakravarti, Director, East and North-East India, signed the MoU for the tourism sector.

The Chief Minister said after the signing of the MoU that she had stressed upon the cultural and educational cooperation during her visit to London.

She further said: "A festival along Thames will be organised from August 18 to September 20. A team from here will be visiting the festival and later, a similar river festival along river Hooghly will be organised here during Durga Puja."

Since Durga Puja in Bengal is famous all over the world, it will be the central theme of the exhibition of Bengal in the UK festival. Banerjee said that the song Jago Durga Jago Dosoprohoronodharini will be played at the exhibition in UK.

The song was composed by Pankaj Kumar Mullick and sung by Dwijen Mukherjee for Mahalaya aired by All India Radio. In the pre-television era, when a programme on Mahalaya was aired on the day of Mahalaya early in the morning, it marked the beginning of Durga Puja in Bengal and was listened by thousands of people on radio.

Banerjee said: "The festival here will be organised taking a cue from the same in Thames, but there will be a local touch to it as well."