The celebrations of Adi Nababarsha with an ‘anandajatra’ is an attempt at making the customary Pahela Baishakh celebrations of the fine art students less popular, reflecting lack of historicity, writes Abu Jar M Akkas
A PHOTOCARD flashed on the Facebook wall late at night on November 14. Another came up after a while. The first is from a news agency, which is also an online news portal. The second is from the online version of a newspaper. They both, along with some others later coming in, said that the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union would celebrate the New Year of the Bengali calendar on November 16, when the month of Agrahayan in the calendar system begins, at least in Bangladesh. The students’ union will take the Revolutionary Cultural Unity on board.
The logic of the celebrations is the once beginning of the Bengali year with Agrahayana, generally spelt with the ending ‘a’ dropped in works of general purpose — the ‘agra,’ the beginning, of the ‘hayana,’ the year. The reports quote the organisers as saying that Agrahayan is the only month in the calendar not named after any constellation. This appears to make it, implicitly, the best month for the celebrations of New Year in a country of Muslim majoritarianism. Stars and planets, or their worship, are best entertained in idolatry, apart from astronomy and calendrics.
A rustle on Facebook came up immediately to question the headlines of the photocards or the news items claiming that it would be the ‘original New Year’ and not ‘New Year.’ The headlines the next morning changed into ‘original New Year’ from the mere ‘New Year.’ The video footage streamed live on Facebook shows that the cultural secretary of the University of Dhaka’s central students’ union, almost sweepingly dominated by the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, at the briefing, rather, said that they would celebrate the festival of Nabanna as the ‘original New Year’ with the rightful claim to the tradition, when Agrahayan began the year, having now been largely forgotten.
The way he spoke has suggested that the Agrahayan celebrations of New Year had fallen into disuse in the near past, when our fathers, or our grandfathers at best, were young as some exotic culture overpowered us that we heard of when we grew up. Nabanna, or ‘navanna,’ can refer to new harvest, rice, grain or the ceremony performed on first eating the new rice or grain. The occasion, directly related to the peasantry, has been part of the Bengali culture for centuries.
The Revolutionary Cultural Unity, which ran in tandem with the students’ union in the celebrations in Dhaka, also organised a similar event in a few outlying areas. The day’s programmes unfolded on November 16 as the organisers said at the press briefing on November 14 — a session of painting with the theme of Nabanna and July 2024, when the authoritarian regime of the Awami League was deposed in a mass uprising.
A procession of revelry named Adi Nababarsha Anandajatra, or the original new year procession of revelry, followed the opening session of painting. The procession had three motifs, that of the July uprising, of the fishing folk and the farming folk. An orchestrated village fair and rounds of cultural sessions featuring songs, dances and magic rounded off the day’s programmes at night. The university students’ union had circulated a 2.64-minute video advertisement promoting the event before it took place.
Bangla has a proverb in its repertoire which lays down 13 festivals in 12 months. The festival of Nabanna is the 10th in the so-called series when farmers not only celebrate the new harvest with the ceremony of eating the first grain but hope, and perhaps pray, that they will have an ample harvest of grains. The festival of New Year, Nababarsha, is the first in the series that has always nestled quietly in rural society for centuries but has started creating tension among right-wing quarters when the students of the Institute of Fine Art in 1989 celebrated New Year of the Bengali year of 1396.
There have always been 12 months in the Bengali calendar, unlike the Roman calendar which once had 10 months. But the number 13 denoting the festivals is not strictly 13 at all. It has a figure of speech aspect. It could also mean ‘countless.’ The addition of another festival would in no way harm the people in Bangladesh. It would be another nice occasion for them to roam about, talk about, and take selfies and flaunt them on social media platforms.
Yet, why did the university students’ union decide to celebrate Nabanna as Adi Nababarsha? The first argument of the organisers is to revive, and remind the people who have already forgotten the Bengali tradition, that Agrahayan was the first month of the year. But any conclusive historical evidence is yet to be forthcoming that the Bengalis have ever celebrated New Year on the first day of Agrahayan. It could have been a case of Vedic times, which date back by several thousand years.
In the Hindu or the Indian national calendar, Chaitra is the first month of the year. It had been so during the time of King Shashanka, who is credited with the introduction of the Bengali calendar system. The first month of the year changed after the calendar system had been modelled on the adaptation of Tarikh-e-Ilahi that Emperor Akbar introduced in 1584 AD, or 992 AH, beginning the year with Baishakh. But, the Tarikh-e-Ilahi names of the months such as Karwadin, Ardi, Vihisu, etc, discontinued. And, the Persian names of Farvardin, Ordibehest, Khordad, etc, died out.
The solar year begins with the vernal equinox, almost everywhere. The whole of mankind has always connected the spring with the ideas of freshness and beginning. This is why the solar year is made to begin with the vernal equinox. Besides, as the day begins with the entrance of the sun, it is only natural that the year should begin with the entrance of that luminary into the northern hemisphere.
It must have, scientifically, been at a time when the constellation of Mrigashirah, which gives the name of Margashirsha, another word for Agrahayan, stood at the point of the entrance of the sun into the northern hemisphere. It could be a time when the spring equinoctial point was under that constellation. This has changed over several thousand years. Scientific calculations suggest that it was between 6,423 and 5,468 years ago that the vernal equinoctial point had been under the constellation of Mrigashirah and this was why the month of Margashirsha earned the descriptive name of Agrahayan. That is too inconceivable a past and there was nothing Bengali at that time.
The Gregorian reform of the Julian calendar in 1582, when 10 days were skipped in October, was a step to correct the deviation in the Roman calendar system. Such a deviation also makes a difference of a day in the Bengali calendar meant for religious and civil purposes. Surya Siddhanta, which is foundational, often trails Drik Siddhanta, which is observational and thought to be more accurate, by a day.
The second argument that the union’s cultural secretary gave was that Agrahayan is the only month of the 12 not named after a constellation. This is entirely a wrong assumption. The name of the month was Margashirsha — as Lord Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita, ‘Masanam margashirsho’ham’ (Among the months, I am Margashirsha) — and Agrahayan is its descriptive name that is no longer valid in its meaning. The name of Margashirsha comes from the constellation of Mrigashirah, the Gemini, which was also called Agrahayanika.
A few proponents, or components, of the organisers have on Facebook also lamented Delhi’s having kept Bangladeshis in the dark, trying to garner sympathy from the quarters opposed to India. The lament was right though. Delhi made Baishakh the first month of the Bengali calendar, but it was the Delhi of Akbar and the time was the late 16th century. Why did, then, the celebrations happen, even on false premises? Why did the students’ union need to revert to an unspecified time in the history of Hinduism or to the specific time of King Shashanka, who was a Hindu? An answer to the question is pressing when the current students’ union of the university is run by a group that has over and over again raised its right-wing head in the past.
Yet, Agrahayan 1 or November 16, when Adi Nababarsha was celebrated, singularly remains associated with the calendar system that the Bangla Academy reformed in 1966. The government officially accepted the reformed structure on January 1, 1987, setting it rolling from the 1987–1988 Bangla year of 1394. The calendar has gone through further corrections. But whilst Agrahayan 1, or the first of Margashirsha, fell on November 16, keeping to the Bangla Academy reform, Agrahayan 1 fell on November 17, keeping to Drik Siddhanta, and on November 18, keeping to Surya Siddhanta.
There are issues most of us know of but are hardly eager to speak about in public as we cannot provide evidence. The celebrations of Adi Nabarbarsha could fall into this category. The event, which is in no way siloed, seen in perspective can give some insight. And, this began with the tussle over the celebrations of Bengali New Year that took place in April. That was a tussle between the government and groups aiding the government, on the one side, and the students, alumni and teachers of the now fine art faculty, on the other side, who had celebrated the occasion their own way since 1989 until 2024.
The first celebrations of Pahela Baishakh of the Bengali year of 1396, which fell in 1989, featuring a procession of revelry, or Ananda Shobhajatra, as a means to break free of the political doldrums of HM Ershad, has since then earned its opposition, especially by right-wing quarters. The instant-success procession changed its name to Mangal Shobhajatra, or the procession of well-being, in the next celebrations. ‘Mangal Shobhajatra on Pahela Baishakh’ was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on November 30, 2016, keeping to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
But the procession, with the trinkets symbolising the traditional Bengal which many Bangladeshis mostly view as of Hindiusm, has never ceased to be criticised by such groups. It even ran into a legal issue when a lawyer on April 9, 2023 sent a legal notice, asking authorities to take steps to stop Mangal Shobhajatra, which is ‘unconstitutional, illegal and artificial.’ In the changed political context, post the July–August 2024 mass uprising, right-wing political forces and other quarters had a consistent demand that the name Mangal Shobhajatra should be changed as the word ‘mangal,’ a Sanskrit word used in Bangla, is associated with some Hindu rituals. An estimated third of the Bangla words directly coming from Sanskrit and another third indirectly, the Bangla language, nurtured in its earliest years by the Buddhists, would lose its state of being Bangla, with the remaining words coming from various languages, chiefly from Arabic through Persian.
The organisers of the 1989 procession, however, defined the word ‘mangal,’ the quality of being auspicious, as something opposed to the martial law of the time and the political fearfulness of the time that they thought inauspicious. Right-wing Hefazat-e-Islam’s demand was to revert to the name it was known by on the first occasion — Ananda Shobhajatra. Ananda, also a Sanskrit word closely associated with rituals in Hinduism but in a lesser way than the word ‘mangal,’ has a horde of meanings, from happiness to bliss and can refer to god and temple.
What the university and the government in April settled on was Barshabaran Ananda Shobhajatra, or a procession of revelry to welcome the New Year. The university authorities explained the unacceptability of the word ‘mangal’ in society. When the celebrations finally happened, staged by an event management company, they certainly looked more organised than they had been, but they glaringly lacked life. The spirit that the spontaneity of the organisers and participants had so far created was conspicuously absent, which many chose to ignore. In the end, with the government butting in and dominating, it turned out to be the public hijacking of a private event.
A further holding of the same or similar events could take the steam off the original celebrations. The celebrations of Adi Nababarsha, with an ‘anandajatra,’ featuring the involvement of the cultural affairs ministry, is one such attempt at making the customary Pahela Baishakh celebrations of the fine art students, alumni and teachers less popular, if not unpopular, shorn of Bengali historicity and causing division in the light of right-wing politics. And, what happened centred on Adi Nababarsha celebrations as a Bengali festival is nothing short of a sour burp of history.
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Abu Jar M Akkas is deputy editor at ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·.
