Dhaka, Bangladesh (BBN)- The three-day Baisabi festival to welcome the Bangla New Year has begun with great enthusiasm and fanfare in Dhaka as well as in the hill towns of the country on Friday.
The term Baisabi is a concoction of the first alphabets of different festivities celebrated by the existing 13 ethnic groups in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the New Age, a local newspaper, reported.
The festival mainly comprises of Fulbiju on the first day, Mulbiju on the second day and Gojya-pojya on the third day.
In Dhaka, Parbatya Chattagram Samity-Dhaka arranged a colourful rally that gathered outside the press club and paraded towards Ramna Lake to begin Baisabi with ‘Fulbiju’, that is, offering flowers of oblation on water.
Mulbiju is the main event of the celebration held on the last day of the last Bangla month Chaitra, where guests are entertained with rich meals and home-made liwour. Gojya-pojya is the first day of the New Year which is celebrated as a resting day for all.
Major Tapan Bikash Chakma, convener of Parbatya Chattagram Samity-Dhaka, told New Age, ‘We, people of hill districts, are quite scattered in Dhaka. It is, therefore, not possible for us to continue the original three-day celebration on a large scale. But individually, we all celebrate the three-day celebration at our residences’.
A good number of people from different ethnic communities of the hill towns who live in Dhaka attended the Baisabi rally with zeal and gusto. This is for the second time that the rally and ‘Fulbiju’ are being held in Dhaka.
This year’s motto of Baisabi has significantly been pronounced by the Samity–‘Let Baisabi unite all ethnic communities’.
Moreover, the organisers have emphasised their demand to the government to preserve and promote the heritage and culture of ethnic communities and full implementation of CHT accord.
Advocate Sultana Kamal, former advisor to the caretaker government, inaugurated the programme which was presided over by Shailaj Bikash Chakma.
In the three hill districts of the country, the New Year celebration has also begun with great fervor among the ethnic groups. Correspondents from Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban said that at over thousand points of the CHT region, celebrations are being held duly.
BBN/SSR/AD-13Apr13-11:44 am (BST)
