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Farmers, weavers, and locals gather at UBINIG's centre in Tangail to celebrate Songkranti with tradition, food, and music
Published : 25 Mar 2025, 08:40 PM
Bengali or Bangla New Year is a relatively “new” celebration, but “Songkranti”, or in Thailand, “Songkran”, goes back into the millennia. It comes from the Sanskrit, “Sankranta” and means “a move or change”. It is related to the Zodiac cycle and, of course, any point in the circle is both a beginning and an end.
In northern India, for instance, April is the beginning of spring when the trees start to bud and bloom and the hibernating animals come out to find food, so, a new beginning. So, for the ancient Indian people, April was a sign of new life and marked the beginning of a new year. That is why they observed, which some still do, their New Year's Day on Apr 13.
And so, on Apr 13, 2009, I visited the UBINIG Ecological Agricultural Centre at Pathrail, Delduar, Tangail where they were observing “Songkranti”.
In Bengal, certainly, Songranti has cut across all religions and indeed was there before any religion came to this part of the world.
Traditionally, the villages still follow certain customs.
Early in the morning on the Songkranti day, the spiritual leaders drink a very nutritious drink to give them energy through the day on which they might fast.
The drink is called Chatu and is prepared from millet and sorghum.
On arrival I drank a glass of this and also a glass of “bel” juice, known to have properties that protect one from sunstroke.
We were also given two types of puffed reddish rice, combined with “tok doi” or yoghurt and liquid “gur”.
For the previous 3 days a “Mela” or fair had been going on in connection with UBINIG’s “Local Variety Rice Preservation Week, 2009,” where thousands of farmers from various parts of the country, associated with Naya Krishi Andolan, gathered to attend a seminar and participate in the cultural celebrations of Songkranti.
Also, a number of local Tangail weavers had set up stalls to market their beautiful handloom cloth.
About 500 weaving families survive reasonably well by selling their products through UBINIG’s sister organisation in Dhaka, “Prabartana” in Mohammadpur.
Sadly, however, hundreds of other weavers remain, like bonded labour, in the clutches of the “Mahajans”.
Near to the handloom weavers’ stalls, we met a village midwife surrounded by more than 50 different medicinal plants in pots which she uses for different problems related to pre-natal, natal, and post natal problems.
Surely, I say to myself, there is a need to spread this indigenous knowledge further.
She emphasised that for full effect the plants should be growing in their natural habitat and not in pots.
The pots were just brought to the fair to educate people like us.
Naya Krishi Andolan has its Community Seed Wealth Centre at UBINIG’s centre where it preserves and multiplies indigenous rice seed through its farmers.
They have identified that about 1,200 local varieties are doing well in different parts of the country, but about 500 are endangered varieties.
We keep hearing that because of “climate change", new genetically modified hybrid varieties must be developed for drier places, hotter places, more flooded places etc.
At this centre varieties have already been classified in this way.
The local varieties, I was told, already, going back centuries, have the characteristics to face up to the problems expected with climate change.
I first visited this area nearly 25 years ago, exploring the villages and studying agriculture and people's livelihoods.
Talking to the local people the other day, especially farmers, was interesting and depressing.
They say that as, no more, are there “birds of prey” such as kites hovering up in the sky, it is clear that the “food chain” has broken and that we are heading for some sort of catastrophe.
In the old days the fishes and frogs in the paddy fields would eat the insects and the kites would eat them, mice and rats.
There are no fishes in the paddy fields now and there are far, far less frogs.
This is all to do, they say, with poisoning the land with fertiliser and insecticide.
We then went to another part of UBINIG where they have a training centre which is also available to others to hire for different purposes.
We met Tangail farmers with a strong connection to UBINIG who were having a “picnic” of their own with lots of music and singing.
On our way back to UBINIG’s main centre for lunch, we were met by a number of Hindu groups of people all dressed up as different mythological entities dancing and singing to send the old year away and welcome the new.
We then went to a “Songkranti” lunch.
On this day no meat, fish or eggs should be eaten.
To emphasise the strong link between man and nature 14 different types of “shak” or spinach are eaten and all 14 varieties have to be “uncultivated”, so had been collected from here and there.
So we had some red rice, the 14 types of Shak, 5 types of Dal or lentils cooked together as well as a special “Khichuri”, a turmeric-spiced hodgepodge of rice and lentils.
So this was my “Songkranti” 2009! A very special day.
[Julian Francis has been associated with Bangladesh since the Liberation War, received the “Friends of Liberation War Honour” in 2012, Bangladesh Citizenship in 2018 and in 2019 the British honour OBE for “services to development in Bangladesh”]
