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Few things capture the heart of a Bengali quite like the hilsa, a fish that evokes not just culinary delight but cultural pride. It swims through the ‘lifeblood’ of India and Bangladesh, appearing at festivals and ceremonies.
Its silvery sheen and delicate taste have inspired fierce arguments over whether the Padma or Ganga produces the superior catch. Bengali-American food historian Chitrita Banerji perfectly captures the cultural weight of this fish, describing it as the “darling of the waters” and a “prince among fish.”
For many Bengali families, Durga Puja is incomplete without their beloved ilish (hilsa). Some even offer it to the Goddess, believing that without it, the puja would be incomplete.
But the story of hilsa extends far beyond the festivals and the dining table. For centuries, it has captured the imagination of poets, writers, and artists – whether in traditional Kalighat paintings or as a majestic, mermaid-like goddess in contemporary depictions.
The Bengali love affair with hilsa is intricately woven into its literary tradition. In Brihaddharma Purana, one of the 18 Upapuranas, fish is praised as a delicacy fit for Brahmins, even as orthodoxies debated its consumption. “This text said that Brahmins could eat the rohu (rui in Bengali), the swamp barb (punti), the snakehead murrel (shoul), and other white and scaly fish,” writes Ghulam Murshid in his book, Bengali Culture Over A Thousand Years.
On how the hilsa won favour despite religious taboos, Murshid writes: “It was not however easy to forever resist, in the name of religion, the delicious yield of river fish, or even a widely accepted food culture.”
The 11th-century Bengali scriptural scholar, Bhabadeb Bhatta, went on to extol the virtues of fish-eating, while the scholar Jeemutbahan praised the hilsa and its oil. Murshid notes that the scholar Sarbananda, too, did not forget the hilsa when he slammed fish-eating in his Teekasarbasya in the 12th century.
Satyendranath Dutta’s poem Ilshe Gundi romanticises the monsoon rains associated with hilsa fishing. Dutta’s verses evoke the rhythmic dance of the hilsa during the monsoons: ‘Ilshe Gundi! Ilshe Gundi/ Hilsa fish eggs/ Ilshe Gundi Ilshe Gundi/ Frost during the day./ The sun laughs at the limit of the clouds/ Ilshe Gundi dances/ Hilsa fish dancing.’
Manik Bandopadhyay’s Padma Nadir Majhi further explores themes surrounding the riverine culture that hilsa embodies, weaving it into the fabric of Bengal’s social and economic life. Meanwhile, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, in his ode to the hilsa, evokes a sense of culinary devotion: “…my heart remains prostrated, overwhelmed by devotion, and refuses to leave that site of pilgrimage.”
In the visual arts, the hilsa’s distinct form has long been a recurring motif in traditional and contemporary art in Bengal.
Ancient finds, like the 4th-century slab with a fish image at Chandraketugarh, reveal that the love for fish runs deep in the culture. “Fish images also appear in many of the terracotta slabs that were made at Paharpur and Mainamati from the 8th century,” writes Murshid.
In more recent times, hilsa appears frequently in Bengali folk art, such as patachitra and Kalighat paintings, symbolising abundance and sustenance. One famous 19th-century Kalighat painting, painted on brown paper with thin, bright pigments and a touch of silver, features a stylised cat holding a fish in its mouth, “representing the hypocritical ascetic or monk who renounces the world but continues to indulge in earthly pleasures.”
“The hilsa is always on the mind of a Bengali, though its season is limited to the monsoons. Recently, I’ve noticed the image of motsokonya appearing in the work of London-based artist Arinjoy Sen. It was stunning how he depicted a Goddess with a body half fish,” says Ina Puri, a London-based arts impresario, curator, and writer. “Contemporary artists are also engaging with the hilsa through different mediums. Take Delhi-based sculptor Prerna Sharma who makes ceramic fish.”
“What I remember of the hilsa is from my childhood as a joda hilsa (pair of hilsa) is what is offered to Saraswati. It is part of our folklore, music, art, and literature, and of course is very relevant to our cuisine. At my own wedding, we had a hilsa in our alpana, which is considered auspicious; during the baby shower, the fish is offered to the mother-to-be. At weddings, along with clothes, they are given a fish with vermillion, which is auspicious,” she says, adding that the hilsa is also seen in the works of filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak.
But hilsa is not just a symbol of celebration. Its role in Bengali culture has also been intertwined with themes of loss and displacement. Diya Gupta, a lecturer in Public History at the City, University of London, in her book India in the Second World War: An Emotional History, explores the tragic consequences of cultural loss during the Bengal famine through the motif of the hilsa.
Citing Marxist poet Samar Sen’s prose poem ‘9th August 1945’, she says, “In Sen’s poem, the metaphor of gustatory perception — ‘ilisher swad’ (the taste of ilish) — comes only at the end, as if held in check for so long.”
And dark sounds gather pace in the clouds
The saffron river’s flow does not bring with it the flames of crops,
The violent flow of the water reveals a muddy delirium,
Only now and then is there a flash of fish.
But fishermen have forgotten the taste of ilish,
And a great death covers the shame of the naked women weavers.
— ‘9th August 1945,’ Samar Sen
The fishermen, previously connoisseurs of regional fish varieties, are represented here as victims of a terrible sensory forgetting, a cultural amputation, as it were, says Gupta. They cannot now even remember what the traditional Bengali culinary delight, the ilish fish, tastes like. Weaving, the well-known craft of Bengali villages, particularly that of East Bengal, is shown to die too along with its women — the Bengal famine affected those who were financially precarious the most, resulting in an enormous decline in the numbers of village artisans. “The famine, then, registers in the poem not only as a shortage of food in Bengal but also as a vast and sweeping destruction of the primordial nubs of Bengali sensibility and cultural life,” she says.
The post-Partition era saw the fish take on deeper symbolic meaning. Writers such as Khademul Islam have used the hilsa to explore the scars left by the Partition of India and the Bangladesh Liberation War.
In his short story, An Ilish Story, Islam juxtaposes the tenderness of cooking hilsa with memories of violence and loss (Revisiting India’s Partition: New Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics, edited by Amritjit Singh, Nalini Iyer, and Rahul K. Gairola).
This transformation of hilsa from a delicacy to something that provokes nausea, both literal and emotional, illustrates the fish’s symbolic weight in Bengali life. As Khademul Islam’s narrator says, “the once-prized fish now makes me feel sick.”
In post-Partition literature, hilsa serves as a metaphor for longing and nostalgia. Murshid writes, “The Padma ilish was not just a fish; it was a symbol of the motherland that was left behind.”
In folklore, hilsa’s role extends to ghost stories and cautionary tales. The Mechho Bhoot, or fish ghosts, are believed to be the spirits of fishermen who met tragic ends in the water. Additionally, the Shakchunni, a spectral figure residing in trees, symbolises unfulfilled desires and the longing for companionship, often craving fish as a metaphor for unmet wishes.
One of the most iconic figures in Bengali folklore is Gopal Bhar, the jester to Raja Krishnachandra of Krishnanagar, known for his wit and antics. As Lee Siegel notes in Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India, hilsa often takes centre stage in these comedic narratives.
During the hilsa season, “fishermen could think of nothing but hilsa-fish. Fishmongers sold nothing but hilsa-fish. Householders could talk of nothing but hilsa-fish.” Raja Krishnachandra challenged Gopal Bhar to bring a hilsa to the palace without anyone asking him about it. Gopal, ever the trickster, shaved half his face, donned old rags, and smeared his body with ashes. As he walked through town with the hilsa, no one mentioned the fish, instead commenting on his absurd appearance. Siegel points out that Gopal’s comic antics, like those of the Sanskrit vidusaka, “turn a threat to society back on itself, as he brings the community, the collective body of hilsa-fish-possessed individuals, to its senses with a trick, a joke, with laughter.”
Perhaps nowhere is the Bengali love for hilsa more apparent than in its cuisine. Bengali homemakers have long experimented with ways to prepare the fish, with cookbooks such as Pak Rajeshwar, touted as the oldest cookbook in Bengali (published in the 19th century) and Pak-Pranali (1923) preserving elaborate recipes. By the 20th century, the renowned culinary author Prajnasundari Devi of the Jorasanko Tagore family listed no fewer than 58 different ways to prepare hilsa in her cookbook, writes Murshid.
Asked why the hilsa remains such an enduring symbol of Bengali culture, Dr Abhishek Basu, who has been teaching in the department of comparative Indian language and literature, University of Calcutta for nine years, says, “The hilsa is often seen as a rebel, a fish that defies the tide by swimming upstream, against the current as it moves from the sea to the rivers. It embodies resilience and revolution — qualities that resonate deeply with Bengal’s spirit. We identify with the ilish because it’s not just a fish; it’s a revolutionary symbol. It’s the joler rupoli shosho, the golden fish.”
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