Pohela Boishakh festival: A unison in straight line of Bengali identity

At the beginning of the New Year, everyone offers good wishes. I, too, extend greetings—yet not only that. Alongside my well-wishes, I speak of hatred. Hatred—fierce, intense, overwhelming, and sacred! Yes, like everyone else, I extend New Year’s greetings. But I’m not one to greet everyone indiscriminately. For friends, I offer my warmest wishes, but for enemies—never. They deserve only hatred. I direct that hatred at those who exploit Pohela Boishakh, a secular and apolitical festival, by smearing it with political colors to serve their vested interests. If we forgive such people even on this celebratory day, they will take our forgiveness as a sign of weakness and grow even more aggressive in their hostility.

For ages, the people of Bengal have celebrated the New Year. There was never any artifice in this popular celebration. It was always marked by secular folk traditions and a timeless cultural continuity. But the ruling elites of the artificial state known as "Pakistan" sought to challenge even this deep-rooted tradition of the Bengali people.

They saw ghosts of Hinduism in every secular and folk celebration, including Pohela Boishakh. Festivals marking the seasons and the New Year were dismissed as nature-worship. Anyone associated with such events was branded a nature-worshipper, anti-Islamic, and therefore an enemy of the Islamic state of Pakistan. This narrative created a crisis of confidence even in rural communities. After the creation of Pakistan, New Year celebrations in villages began to fade. Influenced by the sectarian ideology of Pakistan, rural Muslims began to distance themselves from the New Year festivities. The urban elite, already long detached from folk traditions, had lost almost all emotional and cultural connection to the celebration.

In such a climate, a segment of the urban elite began to develop a sense of opposition to Pakistani ideology and a growing attraction to Bengali identity. However, they, too, suffered from a sense of cultural void. They could not accept the Pakistan-aligned denouncement of Pohela Boishakh, but having lost touch with the traditions of folk life, they also lacked a clear understanding of how to reclaim the festival and resist the propaganda. Thus, in the early years of Pakistani rule—during the 1950s—the urban elite’s observance of Pohela Boishakh carried a spirit of protest, but lacked vitality. These celebrations failed to embody the essence of Bengali identity.

Even so, during the 1960s, a cultural reawakening among the educated and conscious urban Bengalis began to take shape. This revival of Bengali identity brought with it a renewed admiration for Rabindranath Tagore and a push to resist the fragmentation of Kazi Nazrul Islam's legacy. In essence, there was a collective cultural striving to reestablish the true spirit of Bengali identity. Across the country, cultural and social organizations emerged to carry this torch. Among these, Chhayanaut, based in Dhaka, stood out with a unique brilliance.

Chhayanaut undertook a bold and unforgettable initiative. The year they began celebrating Pohela Boishakh under the banyan tree at Ramna Park marked a turning point in Bengali cultural life. Inspired by their example, Bengali communities across towns and cities began to organize their own New Year celebrations. Everywhere, the model of Chhayanaut was adopted and adapted. This festival bore no trace of religious orthodoxy or communal dogma. It was a celebration free of sectarian influence, driven solely by a sense of secular Bengali identity. The festival opened with Rabindranath Tagore’s song "Eso He Boishakh"—a call to break away from the old and welcome the new, echoed in songs, poems, and dances.

In the mid-20th century, when East Bengal came under the rule of the medieval-like state of Pakistan, even the educated could not openly express admiration for Tagore without facing rebuke. In such an oppressive and stifling atmosphere, when Chhayanaut took the initiative to organize the Pohela Boishakh celebration under the Ramna banyan tree, they did so fully aware of the risks involved. Even an organization devoted to the fine arts had to prepare for resistance. Yet they were not alone. Educated and conscious citizens who had no formal link to Chhayanaut also actively supported the festival, united by their Bengali identity. As a result, the festival took on a new dimension of resistance and protest. That spirit of defiance ultimately converged with the broader Bengali liberation movement. After the emergence of independent Bangladesh, Pohela Boishakh was celebrated with even greater enthusiasm, merging the values of independence with those of the New Year celebration.

This merging of secular celebration and national identity has proven intolerable to the enemies of independence. Those who still carry the ideological legacy of Pakistan aim to turn Bangladesh into a Pakistan-like theocratic state. And in many ways, they have made progress toward that goal.

But their efforts are constantly thwarted by the very festival of Pohela Boishakh. Each year, as people across the country come together in vibrant celebration, they reaffirm their unwavering commitment to secularism. They declare that despite their different religious affiliations—Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian—they are one and united as a nation. To them, linguistic and cultural identity is far more important than sectarian religious identity. This pride in national identity is reasserted every year through the secular celebration of Pohela Boishakh, rejecting any attempt to turn Bangladesh into a theocratic state like Pakistan. The idea that “religion is personal, but the state belongs to all” is firmly rooted in the hearts of the people.

To uproot this conviction, the custodians of Pakistani ideology—those masquerading under a Bangladeshi name—are constantly devising new strategies. These include relentless dissemination of fundamentalist religious rhetoric to cloud minds with fanaticism, luring people with temptations, and using brutal intimidation to steer the public away from secularism. This intimidation has manifested in many places—from cultural programs organized by secular groups like Udichi to political rallies of secular parties, and even at Chhayanaut’s New Year event.

The bombing of Chhayanaut’s New Year celebration carried symbolic weight. The religious extremists believed that if they could destroy the event under the Ramna banyan tree once, people would never return, paralyzed by fear. They assumed everyone would retreat into their homes and abandon the tradition of celebrating a secular New Year, thereby extinguishing secular thought itself.

But the number of participants in New Year celebrations has only multiplied year after year—not just in Dhaka, but in towns and cities across the country. Instead of cowering in fear, secular-minded people have made the extremists tremble. We can confidently say that by celebrating Pohela Boishakh, the people of Bangladesh have declared that the tactics of religious fundamentalists have failed. The people of this land follow a religion of humanity. They cherish their faith with sincerity and respect, but they do not sacrifice it at the altar of communalism. They will not allow either worldly or otherworldly politics to sully the purity and spirituality of religion. They rejected Pakistanism in order to establish a secular state. By celebrating the New Year each year in secular fashion, they continue to affirm that Pakistanism will never return to this land.

Jatin Sarker: Educationist and essayist.