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Pahela Baishakh: Since birth capitalistic!

Published : Monday, 10 April, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1033
Ahmed Tahsin Shams
Nowadays, in the capital, capitalists and fond (or victim) of-capitalist culture offer 'Ilish Burger'! A neo-visitor to Bangladesh can hardly differentiate special 'days'. Whether Pahela Baishakh-Falgun, or Eid-Easter, celebration in the city reaches at peak, but somehow it is, indirectly, a capitalist-cocoon.   
As Bangalees are festive-freaks, ritual like Ramadan, here in Bangladesh, seems like a month-long food-and-dress festival: buffet iftar and dinner offers, iftar parties or seheri-treat with pizza, hangouts --- all these seize facebook walls! And here comes today's talk: Pahela Baishakh, waiting on doors (as well as facebook windows), set sail from a rural-root, but today chairs on an elite-route.   
Though power comes from below in carnivals, the capitalist society wittily uses the virtual world, and bourgeoise attitude is maintained even by petty-bourgeoises. Now hangouts are hardly born for hard-talks, rather, for a selfie!    
Cultural industries have the power to rework and reshape to what they represent by repetition and selection. In urban, all events, or 'special days', are coloured in somewhat similarly which can also be termed as 'café-culture'. In fact, it is the society of the spectacle: the permanent opium, a pseudo need ruling over all.
Popularization of this neo-culture in fixed days in urban can be seen as an exploitive, commercial, mass communication based ally of modern capitalism. This change is like a polite euphemism that drives out some forms, to actively marginalize, to push aside, so that something else can take place. And it is done successfully, indirectly, and naturally.
The 'carnival people' are manipulated from 'above', which the 'below' ones are unknown of. A particular class will always attempt to exploit culture and religion for their own benefit. Thereby, it separates city from another city. For instance, in the same country, culture differs at places. Such as, people in Bandarban rejoice the Bengali New Year as Biju Utsab, whereas Dhaka, to a great extent, people have levelled this event to any other, and puts it in the same box with different colours.  
Dhaka city, nowadays, is clouded by shopping malls, shisha-lounges, cafes, billiard and bowling centres, house-full signboards in Blockbuster or Star Cineplex. On any red-marked day on calendar, expecting vacancies on such places would be a daydream! This is how capitalism-favoured culture is taking form. A day starts with Facebook, and ends with Skype (for many).
Looking back to the 17th century, the Mughal Emperor Akbar introduced Pahela Baishakh as the 'harvest calendar'. It was the day for ceremonial land tax collection. On the other hand, some historians also attribute it to the 7th century king Shashanka, as the term Bangabda (Bangla year) is found too in two Shiva temples much older than Akbar era, suggesting that Bengali calendar existed before Akbar's time. However, it was always meant to help collect land taxes after the spring harvest based on traditional Bengali calendar. In short, since birth, it was always capitalistic!
Ahmed Tahsin Shams is Editorial Assistant in The Daily Observer






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