Bangladesh greets the Bengali New Year on 14 April with songs at dawn under a banyan tree in Dhaka and a procession of giant masks and floats made by the city’s art students — a celebration that crosses religious boundaries.
Photo: Abidhasan00, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Bangladesh’s entry in this atlas is Pohela Boishakh, the first day of the Bengali calendar and a public holiday celebrated across religious boundaries by the country’s Muslim majority and Hindu minority. Since Bangladesh adopted a revised calendar in 1987, the New Year always falls on 14 April.
পহেলা বৈশাখ
At dawn on 14 April Dhaka welcomes the Bengali New Year with Tagore’s “Esho he Boishakh” sung under the banyan tree at Ramna, then follows a procession of giant masks and floats — one for evil, one for courage, one for peace — made by the students of the Faculty of Fine Arts.
April 14, 2027Calculated