Pohela Boishak(First day of Bengali new year) Shuvo nobo borsho
Following the Bengali calendar when the Pahela Baisakh comes and we step into a New Year, we try to search our souls with a view to rediscovering our cultural heritage originating from this deltaic land mingled with the Bengali ethnicity. Indeed, once upon a time we had a colourful cultural spectrum. Agro-based village society of the land had multi-dimensional cultural aspects. Literally we observed, 'Baro mashey tero parbon' (thirteen festivals in twelve months) based on various features of six seasons, religious festivity and other social issues. In secular manner once all Bengalis celebrated many festivals like Nabanna, Poush Mela, Chaitra Sankranti, Eid, Muharram, Durga Puja, Kali Puja and so on. Among these festivals, many were purely secular (e.g. Nabanna, Poush Mela) and some were religious. However, some of the secular festivals have been sent to the museum at the point of history when most of the solvent middle class people were urbanised keeping behind their past peasant roots in remote villages.
Though over time, we have lost some of our traditional festival days, still we can be proud of our addition of Ekushey as a very special day which grew out of love for our mother-tongue Bengali. Language is the most powerful instrument for smooth propagation of cultural heritages from generation to generation. The Bengali language in the recent past has reached such a position where we can confidently assert that this is one of the richest languages of the globe. Bengalis from both Bangladesh and India have promoted Bengali to an extent where we are about to establish Bengali in all aspects of our life, starting from education to other private and public domains.
Hindus invited their Muslim friends to their pujas; conversely Hindus also participated as guests in Muslim events and at that time there was no social taboos as we sometime observe in our 'modern' time. In those days, no one raised any question whether that particular festival originated from Hindu religion and whether Muslims should be debarred from participation. The reason behind this lay in the way of preaching Islam which began in around the 14th century in this region. Most of the people who were converted into Islam in the erstwhile East Bengal were inspired by the 'Pir'/'Aulia' who followed Sufism. This Sufism stressed a spiritual union with God and did not require its newest adherents to abandon their traditional beliefs and practices totally. So, the influence of the indigenous Bengali cultural practices is predominantly evident among the Muslim community in this region.
