Pohela Boishakh: History, Date & Significance

The Bengali calendar goes back to the Mughal emperor Akbar, who reformed the calendar in 1584 so that tax collection would match the harvest seasons of Bengal. His court astronomer Fathullah Shirazi combined the lunar Hijri calendar with the solar Hindu calendar to create the Bangla San, the Bengali year, counted from 1556. Landlords settled accounts with their tenants on the first day of Boishakh and traders opened fresh ledgers. That is the halkhata custom, and it is still alive today.

The public celebration we know today took shape in the twentieth century. In 1967 the cultural organisation Chhayanaut began welcoming the new year with Tagore songs under the banyan tree at Ramna in Dhaka. In the Pakistan era that was a quiet act of cultural resistance. Students of Dhaka University's Faculty of Fine Arts started their new year procession in 1989. It became known as Mangal Shobhajatra, UNESCO added it to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016, and in 2025 it was renamed Barshabaran Ananda Shobhajatra. Under the Bangla Academy's reformed calendar, Pohela Boishakh falls on 14 April every year in Bangladesh.