Ancient New Year celebration caps long Eid holidays in Bangladesh
New Year’s parade in Dhaka was added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2016
Thousands of Bangladeshis crowded the streets of Dhaka on Sunday to welcome the Bengali New Year in a festive and colorful celebration reconnecting them with their traditional heritage.
In the capital, people were clad in traditional attire with many dressed in red as they marched and danced in a procession that started at a prominent arts college on the Dhaka University campus.
The parade, called Mangal Shobhajatra, was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage in 2016 by UNESCO.
“This Bengali New Year celebration is part and parcel of our culture,” said Arafat Rahman, a student at Dhaka University.
“This is the only festival in our culture where people from all walks of life join together irrespective of class, caste, and religion. With these celebrations, we welcome the new year with a hope of prosperity for the next year and wish for the well-being of the countrymen.”
Rahman, who is a third-year arts student and has participated in the rally since he enrolled in Dhaka University, said the elaborate and colorful masks used in the procession are picked from Bangladesh’s folk cultures, while the choice of animal figures is linked to the lives of farmers and people in rural areas. “To many extents, through this procession, people reconnect themselves with the origin and nature of this land,” he said.
For Mily Khan, a 37-year-old resident of Dhaka, the New Year parade is a reminder of Bangladesh’s heritage.
“Every year, the celebration style remains the same, but it reignites the spirit of Bengali culture among the minds of the people. This celebration is something we need to nurture most as it is part of our roots, and this is our identity as a Bengalispeaking nation,” Khan said. “Nowadays, our life has become more automated and urban. We can’t manage time to visit the homes in the villages. But the Mangal Shobhajatra rally, fairs,
welcoming the new year with dance and songs, all these components together remind us of the origin of our culture.”
Sunday was a national holiday in Bangladesh. This year, the Bengali New Year — known locally as Pohela Boishakh — took place right after the Eid Al-Fitr holidays, with various celebrations taking place across the country of 170 million people.
The Bengali calendar emerged under the 16th-century Mughal emperor Akbar, who combined Islamic and solar Hindu calendars to facilitate tax collection.
The New Year celebrations
in Bangladesh have also been a medium of protest “against all sorts of irregularities and oppression in society,” especially in recent years, said Prof. Muntasir Mamun, a renowned Bangladeshi historian.
“This Mangal Shobhajatra was first organized (in 1989) as a protest against the then military ruler of the country. Mangal Shobhajatra is the
only secular festival in the world that originated as a tool of protest, and to date, it holds the same spirit,” Mamun told Arab News.
“It’s a rally of festivity, joy, and protest also. The fine arts department (at Dhaka University) always organizes the rally without any corporate sponsor. They do it with people’s participation and by the little contributions from the public,” he said.
“This approach made the Mangal Shobhajatra a platform for all the people of the country … It’s a platform where people from all walks of life join together, wishing for a peaceful society.”