Venkat Raman
Auckland, March 26, 2023
The Bengali community and their guests can expect an evening cultural performances, authentic Bengali food and arts and crafts at their Bangla Noboborsho Utshob (New Year Festival) in Auckland next month.
Organised by Nandan New Zealand, the event will be held from 12 pm to 5 pm on Saturday, April 15, 2023 at the Blockhouse Bay Community Centre located at 524 Blockhouse Bay Road in Blockhouse Bay, Auckland. Sales at various stalls will be strictly on cash.
General Secretary Swastika Ganguly said that the forthcoming Festival follows the ‘overwhelming success of the events organised by the Association last year.’
About Boishakh
She said that New Year, known as Boishakh is marked with celebrations in West Bengal in India, Bangladesh and throughout the world where Bengalis live. The first day of the year, known as Pohela Boishakh is important.
“Pohela Boishakh marks the beginning of a new financial year. On this day, men and women visit Temples in the morning and seek blessings from Gods and Goddesses for a prosperous year ahead. They wear traditional attire, wish their friends and family members, and buy items of gold and silver, as buying these metals on this auspicious day is considered a sign of good fortune. We greet each other, ‘Shubho Noboborsho’ or Happy New Year,” she said.
Bengali New Year celebrations usually involve the preparation of traditional Bengali food items, including Panta Bhat, Bharta, Ilish Bhaji, and other authentic Bengali dishes.
Bangla Noboborsho coincides with other regional festivals such as Vishu in Kerala, Baisakhi in Punjab, Bihu in Assam, and Puthandu in Tamil Nadu.
About Nandan New Zealand
The primary goal of Nandan is to make Bengalis feel at home, located thousands of kilometres away from their Motherland. Throughout the year, Nandan organises cultural, and religious-social programmes like Independence Day, Durga Puja, Lakshmi Puja, Saraswati Puja, Annual Picnic and Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year), to mention a few. The Association also conducts its ‘Natak’ (drama), enjoyed by our members and non-members.
About the Bengali Community
Bengalis or the Bengali people are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia.
The current population (of about 285 million) is divided between Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, Barak Valley, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jharkhand and part of Meghalaya and Manipur. Bengalis have also made Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Nagaland and Uttarakhand their home.
Most of them speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family.
Bengalis are the third-largest ethnic group in the world, after the Han Chinese and Arabs.
Thus, they are the largest ethnic group within the Indo-European category and the largest ethnic group in South Asia. The Bengali population in Pakistan exceeds two million.
The Bengali Diaspora is growing in Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, the Middle East including the Arab Gulf, Myanmar, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
The Bengali community is small in New Zealand. Although no reliable statistics are available, the number of Bengali-speaking people is estimated to be 2500, the majority of them in Auckland.
