In search of mathh, a sugar craft for ingesting a sacred spirit

Wooden mold of sugar craft from Sukumar Pal’s workshop, Mothpara, Santipur, 2022

Kaustav Chatterjee visits Santipur in West Bengal to find the maker of a unique sacred consumable.

Sukumar Pal is an artisan who has been responsible for producing the sugar craft mathh for the past several years. Now he has become old, his son Sujan Pal has taken charge of a small unit comprising the required setups and tools attached to their residential place in Santipur, West Bengal. Beyond the main road, lies the intimate lanes of inner Santipur. One can get into someone’s address by asking the neighbour; that is how I got the chance to visit Sukumar Pal’s house.

: Neighbourhood of Santipur, way toward Shyamchand Jeu temple, 2022

: Sugar crafts “mathh”, Howrah, 2023.

Sukumar Pal has not been making these for a long time; however, he acquired the skills to market them locally and outside of Santipur. Predominantly, these sugar crafts are associated with rituals or pujas of the gods Vishnu and Krishna. My engagement with these sugar crafts takes me back to the story of Dol Purnima in our home, the full moon during the festival of Holi in West Bengal. Certainly, in the ritual associated with the god Vishnu, the major element of prasad or blessings is these sugar crafts. Since it is accustomed to the homely rituals, the taste of these sugar crafts is not only in my tongue, it has been consumed as a sensorial material memory. The sustained engagement with this edible object made me think of its sensorial to social and political aspects in the larger context of scholarship. I have started roaming around the suburbs beside Hooghly River in search of the factory that makes them. In 2021, I visited Sheoraphuli, the makers, and markets for the first commencement of this sugar craft project, introducing to the wide range of ethnographic fieldwork methodologies, off-field research and the ways of looking and understanding the registers of craft knowledge systems. In the process of my visits, my field was expanded to Howrah, Hobibpur, Santipur, etc.; the small town areas in southern west Bengal developed beside the River Hooghly. This story is about the makers of Santipur, which is more of an exploration and experience of visiting a temple in search of a sacred craft.

Of finding the temple

: Entrance of Bijoykrishna Goswami Bari, Santipur, 2022

: Store in Krishan’s name, neighbourhood of Baishnab para, Santipur, 2022

: baishnab para mandir, neighbourhood of Baishnab para, Santipur, 2022

Santipur town has a widely acclaimed festival known as Rash Utsav, which is associated with the myth of Radha and Krishna in its Vaishnavite pilgrimage. Moumita Sen has discussed its multiple facades in an ethnographic study of festivals in small towns of West Bengal in cultural and political terms encircling faith, festival and fun. With people coming from West Bengal and beyond, the whole town experiences a crazy look with the series of chains of LED lights and glorious fairs, temporary shops, and food- stalls that hit the streets.

Who is responsible for making those sugar crafts? To gain access, I was informed that the temple of Shyamchand Jeu could be the inceptor, which will be discussed below. When I first visited Santipur, the festival was not at that time. I reached at noon, Autowalas, Rikshawalas, shopkeepers were getting rest or maybe went for lunch. I walked more than four kilometres from Santipur railway station towards the temple. Each and every corner carries the functional culture of Vaishnavism in its life practice to architecture, from old to modern. The names of the shops and houses are saturated with Radha and Krishna’s names, like Radhamadhab Stores, Radheshyam Villa and Shyamsundar Enterprise. Amidst these stores and villas, in between crossroads, there are multiple Vaishnavite temples, shrines and Goswami Baris (home of Goswamis, significant Vaishnavite families), presiding deities are lying in their post-lunch nap.

Walking along the neighbourhood, the shy and calm town introduced me to the Shyamchand Jeu temple in the centre of Santipur. I walked into the temple premises dedicated to Radha and Krishna in a Bengal-style chala architecture adorned with very few terracotta works. According to the inscription plate of the establishment, it was completed in 1648 Sakabda (1726 CE, as proposed by Shyamal Ghosh). The displayed board shows that the temple is now under the act of the Archaeological Survey of India. However, I met Shamiran Rajbangshi, a gatekeeper and temple caregiver, who stays here and looks after the temple for eight hours a day, from morning nine to evening five. He was sitting on the plinth of the temple, just in front of the sanctum, scrolling down his Instagram feed and frequently winking at me. It is his responsibility to look at (read “surveillance”) people who are entering the temple premises. So far, he had extended his duty into non-duty premises by introducing me to the “Beharia”, a locality at the almost margin of the town, just about to touch the bank of River Hooghly. From there, I would get introduced to “Mothpara” and meet Sukumar Pal, an age-old artisan responsible for producing these small, tangible, edible mobile objects that we can taste. He has a small Karkhana of Batasa (aerated sugar candy), in times of festivals, it adds to the business/busyness of producing mathh. The mostly dark Karkhana turns into a brilliant, colourful space.

: Shyamchanmd Jeu temple from the right side, Santipur, 2022

: Samiran Rajbongshi in front of the sanctum at Shyamchanmd Jeu temple, Santipur, 2022

In search of a sacred craft

From the temple, I got the road map toward Mothpara across the locality of Baishnab para, Ghoralia, Beharia, Guard-er Bari more, I would have searched it immediately on Google Maps, however, it doesn’t know many of its local names. While Samiran Rajbongshi called somebody to confirm if they (uttered the name ‘Hari’) were still making the sugar craft or not. The response was yes, and I was informed to head toward Guard-er Bari, then the right-hand lane. By walking for 10 minutes, there is a library called Beharia Sukanta Pathagar, opposite where the maker Hari stays. Reaching there, I had to wait and ask somebody passing by about Hari’s home workshop. It was a mid-August noon, lonely neighbourhood; anybody would be sceptical about knocking on somebody’s door at this time, though I did.

Neighbourhood of Beharia, Santipur, Nadia, 2022

However, they were not making mathh; they were just managing the household’s pre-lunch necessities. Immediately they identified me as a government official asking for some information. When I introduced myself, In between interactions, they informed me that only if there was a commission would they arrange the unit. So far, he (Hari) has provided me with the information about Mothpara, as it also gave me the agency of taking his name while visiting Mothpara, the same way I took the name of Samiran Rajbongshi here to provide with the network of visiting his place. The narrow lane in front of their house has a display of the products of local weaving units, a series of Gāmchhā, in Bengali: গামছা (mostly a piece of the rectangular piece of traditional coarse cotton cloth, sometimes with a checked design in multiple use, mainly in wiping and drying the body after bathing). It could appear as a display if it was in a gallery space; however, here, it is kept to ensure the process of making.

I had to walk one more kilometre to enter Mothpara. When I visited the Karkhana of Sukumar Pal and his son Sujan Pal, it was late noon. It was off time, so they hadn’t started making mathh yet. However, I got a chance to engage with the prior preparation of their craft-making process as they were about to start making to serve an order. Sujan Pal introduced me to the process of making and processing the white sugar, handling the material and tools along with carved wooden moulds, which are crafted by a few carpenters near Majdia. There are a few moulds, which are mostly old, and some of them were bought recently from Majdia. Wooden moulds are the basic and most useful tool for production. It can be used multiple times for years.

: Sujan Pal explaining the process of making in his home at Mothpara, Santipur, 2022.

: Right- Wooden mold from Sujan Pal’s Karkhana, brought from Majdia, Mothpara, Santipur, 2022

Moulds are generally two wooden bars adorned with a series of curved forms borrowed from the vast visual repository of the region, usually of flowers, birds, fish, horses, temples, generally identifiable designed forms, and are carved through small fine woodcarving, chiselling metal (iron) tools called Batali. Forms include sunken relief and carved convex surfaces. By pouring hot liquid sugar, those carved forms usually turn into small intricate sugar objects. On a 12 x 3, 5 x 1 inch wooden bar are five to seven repetitive carved forms. In the means of production, it’s used again and again, and multiplication of the number of carved forms in the wood coming out as patterns.

The sacred?

The karkhanas/units were not fully functional because the demand was only during the Rash Utsav and/or Holi. I was often informed to come during Rash Utsav to witness the making process. Santipur is a famous Vaishnavite pilgrimage site near Nabadwip, where Nabadwip was the eleventh to twelfth-century capital of the Sena dynasty. Before that, Nabadwip was a pioneer of urban intellectual settlement in Bengal. It was also the birthplace of Chaitannya Mahaprabhu, the Hindu saint from Bengal and the pioneering figure of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Along with Nabadwip, Santipur has a long history of cultural and intellectual progeny before Calcutta. The famous Rash Utsav in Santipur started around the fifteenth century and still lightens up the whole city, co-centred at Shyamchand Jue temple along with other sites. During this festival, we can get to see the display of sugar crafts, which are offerings to the god. Colourful and vibrant, and in various shapes ranging from fish, bird, and horse to temple architecture in three inches. Devotees aspire to obtain these as forms of prasad, blessings of god. So far it is believed to be consumed as a small replica of the temple as an embodiment of the sacred.

Temple within the temple

These masterfully crafted objects, which are consumed as food, are produced in a few places in West Bengal as well as all of India. Here in my fieldwork, Santipur and adjoining areas are the places of production and a witness to its purpose and consumption during particular festivals and religious celebrations. Artisans usually start making a few days before the festival, keeping enough time to circulate the production throughout the market. Dealers and shopkeepers used to order the amount of mathh according to their market needs. At that time, shops were full of maths, not only in Santipur but also throughout south Bengal, mainly in the region besides the Hooghly River. The sustained journey of mathh usually starts from Karkhana to shop to devotees’ faith to the children’s hand who wants to have a Pakhi mathh (sugar craft in the form of a bird) to sweeten their watery mouth.

: Shyamchand Jeu temple during Rash Utsav, Santipur, 2022

: Kirtan performance and gathering at Shyamchand Jeu temple during Rash Utsav, Santipur, 2022

Temple within the temple identifies the temple as an inceptor of locally informed histories, where I found the location of some of the sugar craft-making units through the oral navigation systems, contacts and networks. So far, it also focuses on the interdependencies of craft and the sacred. My exploration emphasises the reading of crafts through epistemological triangulation of art historical, anthropological, and archaeological scholarship in the field as involvement in critically studying contemporary craft practices in a conversational style, not in a lens of policy development or in a saviour mode. It is a search. In a similar context it justifies the multifaceted potency and agency of the sugar craft makers in the region through their ordinary lives, co-dependencies between cultural and material resources. “Temple within the temple” theorises the works and networks of a temple and its associates as a centre of gathering and contacts in search of a sacred craft.

About Kaustav Chatterjee

Kaustav Chatterjee is an art practitioner, writer and researcher based in Hyderabad and Hooghly. Completed an MFA by thesis from the University of Hyderabad, India. Currently employed as a researcher in art, art history and archaeology with Pleach India Foundation, Hyderabad. Kaustav’s research, writing and practice focus on mercantile crafts and transnational material histories of South Asia. Kaustav has been dealing with publication projects on Banarasi textiles, embroidery practices and sugar crafts of India. Simultaneously, he formed an independent research project that works with exhibition and exhibition making and critical writing on intersectional approaches to craft knowledge systems, in-between theory and practice, object studies, design studies, art history, anthropology and archaeology.

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