Bengali New Year

First Boishakh or Pohela Boishakh: The first day of Bengali New Year or Bangabda is Poyla Boishakh or Pohela Boishakh. The day is the traditional New Year’s Day of all Bengali nations. According to the Gregorian calendar, this festival is celebrated on 14th April every year in Bangladesh. This day has been fixed according to the modern Bengali calendar prescribed by the Bangla Academy. In West Bengal, according to the Chandrasaur Bengali calendar, the first Baishakh is celebrated on 14th April or 15th April. The day is celebrated with special festivities as New Year in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The day is also considered a public holiday in Bangladesh and West Bengal. Bengalis living in Tripura also take part in this festival. As such, it is considered as a universal folk festival of Bengalis.

Pohela Boishakh is now the festival of Bengali life. If there is any eternal festival of bringing Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists of Bengal on one stage, it is the first Baishakh. New elements have been added to this festival with the change of time. From the beginning of Pithapuli, there is the matter of eating meat and polao, along with the essential panta-ilish ghanaghata. Just as children and adolescents do not stop in these competitions, so do young and old.

Traders of different levels take the day as an opportunity to start a new business. As traders and merchants open this new halakhata and celebrate this day with new passion and new dreams.

There is a difference of opinion as to whether the first Baishakh should start at 12 noon or not at sunrise. The traditional Bengali New Year greeting is “Happy New Year”.

History: According to the solar calendar, Bengali twelve months were celebrated long ago. This solar calendar began in the Gregorian calendar in mid-April. The first day of the solar year has long been celebrated as an integral part of the culture of Assam, Bengal, Kerala, Manipur, Nepal, Orissa, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Tripura. At that time New Year or Pahela Baishakh was celebrated as Artab Utsav or seasonal festival. At that time its main significance was agriculture, because farmers had to depend on the seasons.

After the establishment of the Mughal Empire in India, the emperors collected rents of agricultural products according to the Hijri calendar. But since the Hijri year is dependent on the moon, it does not match the agricultural yield. This forced the farmers to pay rent at an inopportune time. The Mughal emperor Akbar introduced the Bengali year with the aim of making the collection of rent fair. He originally ordered reforms to the ancient calendar. At the behest of the emperor, Fatehullah Siraj, the famous astronomer and thinker of Bengal at that time, based the rules of the new Bengali year on the solar year and the Arabic Hijri year. The Bengali year reckoning started from 10th March or 11th March 1584 AD. However, this method of calculation was implemented from the time of Akbar’s accession to the throne (November 5, 1556).

The original name of the Bengali year was Tarikh-e-Elahi. The Mughal emperor Akbar introduced Tarikh-e-Elahi in 1575 by issuing a decree on 10 or 11 March, the 29th year of his reign. As soon as he ascended the throne, he realized the need to introduce a scientific, workable and acceptable calendar, where the calculation of days and months would be accurate. With this objective in mind, he commissioned the then eminent scientist and astronomer Amir Fatullah Siraj to compile a new calendar. Abul Fazl, the famous scholar and minister of Emperor Akbar, explained that the Hijri calendar was not at all suitable for agriculture because 31 years of the lunar year is equal to 30 years of the solar year. As a lunar year, revenue was collected from the peasantry, while farming depended on the calculation of the solar year. The lunar year is 354 days and the solar year is 365 or 36 days. As a result, there is a gap of 11 or 12 days in a year between the two calendars. The Bengali year was born in the context of the modernization of this revenue collection by Emperor Akbar.

The names of the twelve months of Tarikh-e-Elahi were Karbadin, Ardi, Biswa, Kordad, Tir, Amardad, Shahriar, Aban, Azur, Baham and Iskander Miz. It is not possible for anyone to say for sure when and how these names were changed to Boishakh, Jyastha, Ashar, Shravan, Bhadra, Ashwin, Kartik, Agrahayan, Poush, Magh, Falgun and Chaitra. It is estimated that the twelve months were later named after the Bengali month. From Vishakha Nakshatra to Boishakh, from Jayistha to Jyastha, from Shar to Ashar, from Sravani to Sravan, from Bhadrapada to Bhadra, from Ashwayini to Ashwin, from Kartika to Kartik, from Agrahayan to Agrahayan, from Pousya to Poush, from Falguni to Falgun and Chitra Nakshatra.

The celebration of Pahela Boishakh started from the time of Akbar. At that time everyone was obliged to pay all rents, duties and duties by the last day of the Bengali month of Chaitra. On the following day, the first Baishakh, the landowners used to entertain the residents of their respective areas with sweets. Various festivals were organized on this occasion. The festival turned into a social event which has changed its form and is now at this stage. At that time the main event of this day was to make a halakhata. Halkhata means a new book of accounts. In fact, halakhata is the process of formally updating the shop accounts on the first day of the Bengali year. In rural, urban or commercial areas, old accounts are closed and new accounts are opened. On the day of Halkhata, shopkeepers entertain their customers with sweets. This practice is still prevalent in many places, especially in gold shops.

The news of modern New Year celebrations was first found in 1917. Home kirtan and puja were arranged on the first Baishakh of that year to wish victory to the British in the First World War. Then in 1938 similar activities are mentioned. Later, the practice of celebrating the first Baishakh, which took place before 1967, did not become very popular.

Pohela Boishakh Celebration: Intense communication of culture and culture of the rural people with the New Year festival. The house is clean and tidy and has special food arrangements. In the confluence of a few villages, an open field is organized at the Baishakhi Mela where there is a marketing of various cottage industries, there is a variety of pitha puli and in many places there is a system of eating panta rice with hilsa fish. Being extremely beautiful is an old culture of the day with various rural sports competitions. Notable among these are boating, stick playing or wrestling. The largest such wrestling event in Bangladesh is on 12 Baishakh, at Laldighi Maidan in Chittagong, known as Jabbar’s Boli Khela.

New Year and Mars procession of Chayanat at the base of Ramna in Dhaka: Mars procession is an essential part of Dhaka’s Baishakhi festival. At the initiative of the Institute of Fine Arts of Dhaka University, the procession left on the morning of the first Baishakh, went around different roads of the city and came back to the Institute of Fine Arts. The procession highlights rural life and abhorrent Bengal. People of all classes and professions of different ages participate in the procession. Masks of different colors and portraits of different animals were made for the procession. Since 1989, this Mars procession has been celebrated as one of the attractions of the first Baishakh festival. In 2016, UNESCO declared the festival procession, organized by Dhaka University, as an “invaluable cultural heritage of humanity”.

In the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, the focal point of the main event of the first Boishakh is the call of the new year sun through the concert of the cultural organization Chayanat. After sunrise on the first day of Boishakh, the artists of Chayanat called for the new year by singing in unison. Although the place is known as bot root, in fact the tree in the shade of which the stage is made is not a bot tree, but an ash tree. Various Baishakhi poems and songs are recited there. Everybody irrespective of caste, religion, caste and creed is overwhelmed with life on this day. Poets and writers became agitated about Boishakh. They express their love for Boishakh in prose and poetry. Destruction-creation, separation-reunion, happiness-sorrow, receipt-non-receipt all come up in the twists and turns of different types of art of the artists. Boishakh’s footsteps are widespread in literature. Poems, rhymes, stories, songs, etc. have been written in Bengali literature with the background of Boishakh. The various features of the season easily move the writers, inspiring them to write on different subjects.

Boishakh is captured by the poets as Rudra. They are not disturbed in the form of Rudra of Boishakh but they are anxiously looking for a way for the time of Baishakh-Baishakhi, so that the worn leaves fall off, the stalks of life are filled with new leaves, new colors, new happiness fills the town of Bengal.

That is why Nazrul roared in his usual fiery voice in his evening poem ‘Kal-Baishakhi’:

Repeatedly such as Kal-Baishakhi failed in Ray Pub-Hawa — “Baishakhi Kal-Baishakhi!”

Rabindranath also observed Boishakh in the form of Rudra. In Kalpana Kavya’s poem ‘Baishakh’, his direct address to Baishakh is as follows: O Bhairab, O Rudra Baishakh,

After Nazrul-Rabindranath, Farrukh Ahmed is one of those who became famous for writing the longest poem on the first Baishakh in Bengali. Sitting on the completely opposite pole of Rabindranath, the two poems he composed, ‘Baishakh’ and ‘Baishakh’s Black Horse’, have given a new dimension to Baishakh’s poetry. Although written in the style of Rabindranath, his poem ‘Baishakh’ contains different messages and different voices. Farrukh also saw Boishakh as Rudra. To him, Boishakh is a symbol of great power, which has appeared for the sake of great welfare.

Jibananda Das is a life close poet. The feeling of his poetry is wide and deep. The poem he wrote about Boishakh-

“I will fall asleep one day

The night of your stars

Shire Baishakh clouds are white

Like a mountain of conch shells. “

Jasim Uddin, a rural poet, expressed the most subtle feelings about Boishakh.

‘‘ Boro paddy paddy on the shelf at the end of Bosekh

Gold has been mixed with gold.

Al-Mahmud, the modern poet of contemporary Bengali literature, wrote in his poem “A drought in the month of Boshekh”

“Come, Boshekh, the king of the seasons, open the mouth of the current and let the happiness of water be in the thirsty chest.”

Poet Sukanta Bhattacharya has seen Boishakh in a different dimension. The poet has considered Boishakh as an inexhaustible force of awakening in the new form of nature and man. In the poem “Baishakhi” he says-

“Come, come, come, new, come, come, Boishakh.”

Come, light, come, O soul, call for the dawn.

Poet Syed Shamsul Haque has found an attempt to see himself in a new indomitable manner. The poet is startled, happy to recognize himself. He wrote-

“I don’t know who I am, what a surprise today

The old has decorated me with new ones, Boishakh ”

Thus many poets and writers have expressed their attitude towards Boishakh in their poems. Through this, poets and writers have established the status of Boishakh in their poems. This New Year’s consciousness will inspire the entire nation to live anew.

Boishakh is imagined as a symbol of change of era. Let the new year fill the house of their life with love, grain, music, happiness and peace, by blowing away the old age’s sickness, illness, pain-failure, old age, this is their only call. For this reason, they have also sung the joy of Boishakh in a very fluent manner.

Celebration of Pahela Baishakh at DC Hill premises in Chittagong: DC Hill Park is the main center of Pahela Baishakh festival in the port city of Chittagong. Every year, a two-day event is organized by the Sammilita Sangskritik Jote to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the new year. In addition to various cultural programs, there are various rural products on the open stage. There is also a system of panta hilsa.

Initiatives to jointly celebrate the first Baishakh in Chittagong In 1973, 1984 and 1985, the event was organized at the foot of the Ispahani Hills with the efforts of politicians. The festival was relocated to what is now DC Hill Park in 1986, the first of its kind. Initially, a squad was formed with two members from each organization, and that group performed the combined music. Since 1980, the organizations have started performing songs separately. Later, after the group theater coordination council was added, dramas were also added to the program.

Other regular events in the city include the three-day festival of children’s organization Fulki, which ends on the first day of Boishakh. New Year fair is organized at the premises of Bangladesh Mahila Samiti Girls High School in the city. Besides, concerts are organized on the open stage at the Central Railway Building or CRB.

At the Badsha Mia Road Campus of the Chittagong Institute of Fine Arts, a colorful cultural program is held on the occasion of the New Year.

In the Hill District, Indigenous New Year: There are three major ethnic minorities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts region of Bangladesh, each of which has a festival on New Year’s Day. Baisuk of Tripura, Sangrai of Marmas and Biju festival of Chakmas. Currently, the three nationalities celebrate the festival together. The joint name of this festival is Vaisabi festival. There are many aspects to this festival, one of which is the Marma water festival.

Pahela Boishakh in other countries: Apart from Bangladesh and India, Pahela Boishakh is celebrated in many other countries of the world. Mainly expatriate Bengalis celebrate the first Baishakh in those countries. On this auspicious day of Pohela Boishakh, when we can bridge the gap between rich and poor, we can all be inspired with the dream of building a golden Bangladesh, only then will we be able to eat panta-ilish, sing at the bottom of Ramna and recite Boishakh poems. We eat panta-hilsa, but we do not forget about the misery of the nation, we do not forget about the oppressed humanity. Our two eyes shine in the new dream, our heart is lost in joy.