Bangla New Year: Festival from Shantiniketan to Ramna

Dr. Karunamaya Goswami

Rabindranath Tagore pioneered the idea of celebrating Bangla New Year's Festival in his Shantiniketanschool in its present day urban dimension whose cardinal content is to create a feeling of unity in the diversity of human existence. Tagore explained his festival philosophy of unity on many occasions in addresses, essays, letters and dramas. Some addresses to Brahma congregations, which have been included in anthologies like 'Shantiniketan and Dharma' are outstanding in this respect. Some such addresses have been entitled as Varshasheshe (Year Ending), Navabarsha (New Year) and Utsav (Festival). They amply explain Tagore's concept of festivals on nature, more particularly the one like celebrating the Bangla New Year's Day. Tagore believes that the feeling of unity is the spirit of festivals of all kinds. But the feeling varies in degrees. If the festival is arranged on a sectarian scale, the area covered by units is small, if the festival is arranged on a family scale unity area is even smaller. In his address entitled Utsav, Tagore says that all festivals are valuable in so far as they give the feeling of unity in those who participate, even though the feeling covers a small area. Unity of mankind matters whatever may be the area covered. But festivals are at their best when they create a sense of mankind's universal unity.

Every participant coming from diverse religio-cultural background takes a feeling that the festival is his or hers. How does it happen, Tagore questions and gives the answer to his listeners. He says that every religion has its festivals related to rites. Even families have their own festivals related to family traditions. Religious festivals offer a platform of union of people belonging to a particular faith. It does not strike a chord of universal unity, let alone the family feasts. The only why, as Tagore suggests, to create a platform of universal human unity is organise festivals on nature, which is a common heritage to all. Religion has a distinguishing feature, it opens its doors to a particular group of people. But nature is above all the considerations of cult and creed. If nature is a home, its doors are open to all. As for festival on nature, if it has a deity, he is certainly a person who welcomes all under the blue canopy of the sky, in mellow sunlight charged with fragrance of flowers. He embraces all and leaves none out. So, Tagore says, we must go beyond the area of our home centric or temple centric festivals and organise seasonal festivals, most importantly the new year's celebration which may be participated by all and which may give very strong feeling that with all our diversities we all are one. Only nature can assure the oneness.

In one of his letters addressed to Indira Devi Chaudhurani Tagore says, a man is born in a home, but in fact he is born in the huge world. He is in the midst of the hugeness of existence. He feels this hugeness only by going very close to nature. There is, therefore, no alternative to organising festivals on nature on nature if we are really keen about the greatness of our being born as a human being. Tagore began to organize seasonal festivals in his Shantiniketan school which he would call Ashram vidyalaya or the Hermitage school only to give the feeling that the school inmates were living very close to nature as it used to happen hundreds of years ago with the Rishis or saints running their camp schools in the lap of nature.

In one more letter to Indira Devi, Tagore wrote that the relation between man and nature is best established through songs. You sing a song on the spring, he said, and at once feel the post winter liveliness in nature that runs through the morning breeze, colours of flowers and love friendly chirping of the cuckoo. So Tagore started arranging the Bangla New Year's festival in the Shantiniketan school as a great yearly event which still continues to happen in perhaps, greater gusto.

Chhayanat in Dhaka was founded in 1963 in the back drop of Tagore birth centenary celebrations in 1961 A trail of chaos fallowed before and after the celebration. Intelligent people were decided into pro and anti Tagore camps. The pro group overwhelmed the anti group that last of all suffered the deadly blow in 1971 with the emergence of Bangladesh. The Chhayanat protagonists tried hard to uphold all what were propagated by Tagore. Bangla New year's festival was certainly one, which they took up with utmost seriousness. The festival was arranged in the Ramna Park and the musical soiree took place at the foot of an old expanding banyan tree, which still stands strong as a witness of time.

Dr. Noajesh Ahmed known for his wisdom of bioscience and photography recollects that he spotted out the site to Wahidul Huq in 1967. Any way, the concept of Tagore style New Year's festival in Ramna was destined to create history. During the long period from 1967 to 2007 it was not held only once which is in 1971 become the genocide in Bangladesh started from Dhaka from the midnight of 25th March.

Prior to 1967, Bangla New Year's festival was celebrated in Bangladesh distinctly in two streams, one being the age-old folk stream, which accommodates fairs, cultural shows and opening of new year's book of accounts by the big trading concerns and the other being the newly growing urban stream limited to organising indoor cultural shows with components like song, recitation and dance. But it was felt very strongly in the sensible and patriotic segment of the society that an occasion like celebrating the Bangla New Year should be arranged in a big open-air scale. It was the demand of post Language Movement days in Dhaka. By laying down lives for the sake of dignity of Bangla Language most of the people in Bangladesh rejected the medieval cultural vision of Pakistan and committed them to liberal cultural values that make possible the growth of a liberal democratic society.

It became quite apparent in those days that culture stood as a dominant content in Dhaka-based movement for democracy. While Pakistani cultural vision stood for division, the vision of the right thinking people of Bangladesh stood for union. The cultural activists here felt that they could comfortably follow Tagore's instances of arranging festivals on nature and importantly the Bangla New Year's Festival rightly in Tagore style as an open air show. They thought of adding a serious socio-cultural content to the whole occasion, which has a traditional impact on the Bangali people.

The Shantiniketan style celebration being arranged by Chhayanat in Ramna in 1967 left a bench mark in the cultural history of Bangladesh. The response from Dhaka citizens was instant and exuberant. I remember very vividly that the 1967 festival was attended by an amazing number of people. The whole of Ramna Park was filled with the visitors. People from Dhaka and the adjoining townships have been attending the Ramna New Year's festival in an ever increasing number since then. The Chhayanat spirit has started working very well in provoking institutions, groups large and small to respond creatively to the call of the Bangla New Year and offer the best of their performance to celebrate the occasion. In the backdrop of resistance to Pakistani cultural design to repress the idea of Bangladesh's fomenting concept- Bengali nationalism, the New Year's celebrations in Tagore track gave a new direction to the Dhaka centric growth of liberal culture.

Tagore started his festivals on nature one hundred years ago. We are working with festivals one hundred years after. Society's facets have changed. Dimensions of creative responses to the call of Bangla New Year have undergone amazing changes. Even then the spirit remains the same: to create a platform for unity of people. There is perhaps no alternative to national unity. But how does a nation unite? It cannot unite in real sense under any notification. The sense of unity comes from the resource of the soul and only some secular occasions can stir human soul to the call of unity. Therefore, as Tagore believed the aesthetics of the entire occasion matters most in giving a feeling that we run in unity even though we exist in diversity.

In Bangladesh, as far as I understand from four decades of experience, the adoption of Tagore style celebration of the Bangla New Year's festival by Chhayanat has been a great thing. It has given a new aesthetic direction to the age old and used out format of traditional celebration. After five or ten decades all old things will disappear and the Shantiniketan - Ramna style will flourish in yet unknown amazing ways. This is where the strength of a visionary part lies and this is how it works.