Bangladesh reworks Bangla calendar to match national days with West

The Bangladesh government has revised the Bangla calendar to match the national days with the Western calendar.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 16 Oct 2019, 06:47 PM
Updated : 16 Oct 2019, 06:47 PM

The change has made Ashwin a 31-day month, which means Kartik will start on Thursday and the season of Hemanta is delayed by a day as the revised calendar went into effect from Wednesday.  

Some newspapers, however, missed the revision and published Wednesday’s issues with the Bangla date as Kartik 1. Some online news outlets also showed Kartik 1 as the Bangla date.

The year 1426 is under way in line with the Bangla calendar.

In the old Bangla calendar, the first five months had 31 days and the remaining seven months 30, with Falgun, the 11th month, having an additional day in the leap year.  

The first six months will be with 31 days, Falgun 29 days (30 days in leap year), and the rest five months will have 30 days in line with the revised calendar.

The public administration ministry had issued a circular notifying the change following recommendations by a special committee of the Bangla Academy, according to Mobarak Hossain, a director at the academy.

The committee headed by retired Dhaka University physicist Professor Ajoy Roy was formed in 2015.

“It has been done accommodating a myriad of demands,” Mobarak said.

The Language Martyrs’ Day of Feb 21, Independence Day of Mar 26 and Victory Day of Dec 16 will fall on Falgun 8, Chaitra 12, and Poush 1, respectively of the Bangla calendar for next 100 years now as they did in the Gregorian calendar years 1952 and 1971, according to Mobarak.

In the old Bangla calendar, Feb 21 fell on Falgun 9 earlier this year. After the change Dec 16 will fall on Poush 1, not on the second day of the month.

Mobarak said the Bangla New Year will also fall on Apr 14, Rabindra Joyanti of Baishakh 25 on May 8 and Nazrul Joyanti of Jaishthha 11 on May 25.

The Bangla calendar had been revised twice earlier. Astrophysicist Dr Meghnad Saha led the first revision in the 1950s and Dr Muhammad Shahidullah in 1963.