About ECDPA^®

In 1970, a small immigrant Bengali community in New York decided to organize the first Durga Puja in New York. It was celebrated at Columbia University with great pride and enthusiasm under a newly created organization, name East Coast Durga Puja Association. The first president of that organization was the late Arun Ghoshal who was a professor in Calcutta University. By popular demand, Late Ranajit Datta of Pelham, NY was elected president the following year, and he served the association for seven years. As this puja activities became well established the gathering every year started growing. The Bengali population in the New York City area began to increase slowly at first and then quite rapidly. By 1970 when the first Durga Puja was celebrated, the Bengali population was in the 100-200 range (and the great majority of the Bengalis was from India). With the change in the American immigration laws in 1968, large numbers of Bengali professionals began to arrive in the city, mostly from India. By 1975, there were a couple of thousand Bengalis living in New York. Another huge wave of Bengalis, this time from Bangladesh, arrived in the mid-1990s when the American government established the “diversity visa” lottery program. From this point other organizations started celebrating Durga Puja in New York and the number of Durga Puja celebrations increased.