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Dhaka is the most populous city of Bangladesh and is characterized by its busy urban life and a variety of cultural experiences, including festivals, cuisine, entertainment, shopping, and sites of interest. The nature of these activities mirrors the secular character of the city's population.[1] Important holidays include Language Movement Day, Independence Day, Victory Day, and Pahela Boishakh. Religious festivals include Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Durga Puja, Buddha Purnima, etc. The culture of Dhaka is based on the culture of Bengal.[2]
Many of Dhaka's artworks and museums, as well as public ceremonies and rallies, serve to commemorate the war crimes committed by Pakistani war criminals and their collaborators against the Bangladeshi people. Dhaka's people congregate at the Shaheed Minar and the Jatiyo Smriti Soudho to remember the national heroes of the Bengali Language Movement and the Bangladesh Liberation War.[3] Many schools and colleges organize fairs, festivals, and concerts, in which citizens from all levels of society participate.
Pohela Boishakh, the Bengali New Year, falls annually on 14 April, marking the first day of the harvest season, and is popularly celebrated across the country.[3] Usually on Pôhela Boishakh, homes are thoroughly scrubbed and cleaned and people wash early and dress in fine clothes. It is customary to visit relatives, friends, and neighbors and attend local fairs. Fairs are arranged in many parts of the country where various agricultural products, traditional handicrafts, toys, cosmetics, as well as various kinds of food and sweets are sold. The fairs also provide entertainment, with singers, dancers and traditional plays and songs. Horse races, bull races, bullfights, cockfights, flying pigeons, and boat racing were once also popular. In Dhaka, large crowds of people gather on the streets of Shahbag, Ramna Park, and the campus of the University of Dhaka for celebrations.
Despite the growing popularity of modern music groups and rock bands, traditional folk music remains popular.[5] The works of the national poet Kazi Nazrul Islam and national anthem writer Rabindranath Tagore have a widespread following across Dhaka.[6] The Baily Road area, known as Natok Para (Theater Neighborhood), is the center of Dhaka's theater movement.[7]
Bangladesh Betar is the state-run primary provider of radio services and broadcasts a variety of programs in Bengali and English. In recent years, many private radio networks, especially FM radio services, have been established in the city, such as Radio Foorti FM 88.0, Radio Today FM 89.6, Radio Amar FM 88.4, ABC Radio FM 89.2, DHAKA FM 90.4, etc. Bangladesh Television is the state-run broadcasting network, providing a wide variety of programs in Bengali and English since its establishment on 25 December 1964. It has two TV channels: BTV and BTV World. BTV telecasts via terrestrial and satellite networks. while BTV World telecasts via satellite only. Sangsad Bangladesh Television is another state-run TV channel, which was launched on 25 January 2011, and broadcasts the parliamentary activities of Bangladesh. Cable and satellite TV networks, such as Ekushey Television, Channel I, ATN Bangla, Desh TV, RTV, NTV, Banglavision, Channel 9 Bangladesh, and Independent TV, are amongst the most popular channels.
The main offices of most publishing houses in Bangladesh are based in Dhaka. The Prothom Alo and The Daily Ittefaq are the most popular amongst the large number of Bengali language daily newspapers, periodicals, and other publications in the city.[citation needed]The Daily Star and The Independent are among the English-language daily newspapers published.[8]
Fixed-line tele-density in Bangladesh is less than 1%. Mobile penetration is 82 telephone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.[9][10]
The Bangladeshi press is diverse, outspoken, and privately owned. Over 200 newspapers are published in the country. Bangladesh Betar is the state-run radio service.[11] The British Broadcasting Corporation operates the popular BBC Bangla news and current affairs service. Bengali broadcasts from Voice of America are also very popular. Bangladesh Television (BTV) is the state-owned television network. There are more than 20 privately owned television networks, including several news channels. Freedom of the media remains a major concern due to government attempts at censorship and harassment of journalists.
The cinema of Bangladesh dates back to 1898, when films began screening at the Crown Theatre in Dhaka. The first bioscope in the subcontinent was established in Dhaka that year. The Dhaka Nawab Family patronized the production of several silent films in the 1920s and 30s. In 1931, the East Bengal Cinematograph Society released the first full-length feature film in Bangladesh, titled TheLast Kiss. The first feature film in East Pakistan, Mukh O Mukhosh, was released in 1956. During the 1960s, 25–30 films were produced annually in Dhaka. By the 2000s, Bangladesh produced 80–100 films a year. While the Bangladeshi film industry has achieved limited commercial success, the country has produced notable independent film makers. Zahir Raihan was a prominent documentary-maker until his assassination in 1971. Tareque Masud (1956–2011) is regarded as one of Bangladesh's outstanding directors due to his numerous productions on historical and social issues. Masud was honored by FIPRESCI at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 for his film The Clay Bird. Other prominent directors of Bangladesh cinema include Tanvir Mokammel, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, Humayun Ahmed, Alamgir Kabir, and Chashi Nazrul Islam.
In Dhaka, meals consumed at home generally include rice as a staple with fish, meat, or vegetable curries as a side. Dal (a lentil soup) is a common accompaniment. Rice can be replaced by roti or porota. Most restaurant cuisines in Dhaka are different from these meals. Kachchi biryani, chicken biryani, tehari, polao, and khichuri are the most common courses in restaurants. For snacks, mughlai porota, halim, shingara, and samosa are common. Borhani and lacchhi are amongst the most popular drinks. Street carts in parks offer snacks like chotpoti, jhalmuri, and fuchka.
People of the city consume a varied diet. In addition to the popular Bangladeshi cuisine and South Asian variants, a large variety of international cuisine is available in Dhaka. There are restaurants specializing in Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Italian, and other cuisines.[13] Local and international fast food shops and chains serve burgers, fries and other readily available foods. Often, many restaurants will customize foreign cuisine to meet the taste of local people. For instance, most Chinese restaurants in Dhaka use recipes different from authentic Chinese food.
The following international foreign-owned restaurant chains are currently operating in the country:
There are markets in almost every part of Dhaka, where household commodities are available. Shopping malls are also found in every major avenue; some of the malls are Dhaka New Market, Basundhara City, Jamuna Future Park, Shimanto Square, Rapa Plaza, Metro Shopping Mall, Concord Twin Towers, BCS Computer City, Navana Tower, Pink City Shopping Mall, Mouchak Market, Eastern Plaza, Fortune Mall, Eastern Plus, Banga Bazar, Razdhani Market, Gausia Complex, Holland Centre, Suvastu Nazar Valley, Confidence Tower, Mollah Tower, Lutfun Tower, Eastern Mallika, Muskut Plaza, North Tower, Razlaksmi Complex, and Multiplan Center. Kudrat-E-Khuda Avenue (formerly known as New Elephant Road) and its surrounding areas are popular shopping destinations. Jamuna Future Park is the 12th largest shopping mall in the world, with a gross leasable area of 4.1 million sq ft, and total area of 5.45 million sq ft.[14][15]
Chain stores like Shopno, Agora, Meena Bazar, Nondon, and PQS are also found in most of the residential areas of the city. There are many branches of Aarong around the city, where local products including clothing, handicrafts, groceries and home decor are available.
Bangla Bazar is the largest hawker's market in Dhaka. The market is situated near Chankharpul, behind the campus of the University of Dhaka. It is favored by foreigners visiting Bangladesh, and is famed for its reasonably priced cloth. Basundhara City is the second largest mall in the country, and has more than 2,300 shops and 21 stories.
Dress
A jamdani-muslin shari in a traditional design
The most popular dressing styles for women are sari or shalwar kameez, while men usually prefer western clothing instead of the traditional lungi. Dhaka is credited for the revival of the jamdani sari, due to the many local sari stores selling and promoting these locally hand-made traditional Bengali saris of fine patterned muslin. Jamdanis are entirely hand woven and originate from the Mughal era. Jamdanis are produced by a traditional high quality cottage industry, which is slowly dying out due to the slow production process. A single medium-range Jamdani sari may take as long as 3 months to complete.[16]
Heritage
The Old City of Dhaka is home to over 2,000 buildings built between the 16th and 19th centuries, which form an integral part of Dhaka's cultural heritage.
Dhaka, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. It is the ninth-largest and seventh-most densely populated city in the world with a density of 23,234 people per square kilometer within a total area of approximately 300 square kilometers. Dhaka is a megacity, and has a population of 10.2 million residents as of 2024, and a population of over 23.9 million residents in Dhaka Metropolitan Area. It is widely considered to be the most densely populated built-up urban area in the world. Dhaka is the most important cultural, economic, and scientific hub of Eastern South Asia, as well as a major Muslim-majority city. Dhaka ranks third in South Asia and 39th in the world in terms of GDP. Lying on the Ganges Delta, it is bounded by the Buriganga, Turag, Dhaleshwari and Shitalakshya rivers. Dhaka is also the largest Bengali-speaking city in the world.
Bangladesh has numerous public holidays, including national memorial, religious and secular holidays of Bengali origin. The Bengali traditional calendar, known as Baṅgābda is the national and official calendar in Bangladesh. The holidays are celebrated according to Bengali, Islamic or Gregorian calendars for religious and civil purposes, respectively. Religious festivals like Eid are celebrated according to the Islamic calendar, whereas other national holidays are celebrated according to the Bengali and Gregorian calendar. While, the Islamic calendar is based on the movement of the moon, it loses synchronization with the seasons, through seasonal drift. Therefore, some public holidays are subject to change every year based on the lunar calendar.
Pohela Boishakh is the Bengali New Year celebrated on 14 April in Bangladesh and 15 April in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Jharkhand and Assam. It is a festival based on the spring harvest—which marks the first day of the new year in the official calendar of Bangladesh.
Chaand Raat is a South Asian Cultural observance on the eve of the festival of Eid al-Fitr; it can also mean a night with a new moon for the new Islamic month Shawwal. Chaand Raat is a time of celebration when families and friends gather in open areas at the end of the last day of Ramadan to spot the new moon, which signals the arrival of the Islamic month of Shawwal and the day of Eid. Once the moon is sighted, people wish each other Eid Mubarak. Women and girls decorate their hands with mehndi (henna), and people prepare desserts for the next day of Eid and do last rounds of shopping. City streets have a festive look, and brightly decorated malls and markets remain open late into the night. Chaand Raat is celebrated festively and passionately by Muslims all over South Asia, and in socio-cultural significance, is comparable to Christmas Eve.
The culture of Bangladesh is intertwined with the culture of the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. It has evolved over the centuries and encompasses the cultural diversity of several social groups of Bangladesh. The Bengal Renaissance of the 18th early 19th centuries, noted Bengali writers, saints, authors, scientists, researchers, thinkers, music composers, painters, film-makers have played a significant role in the development of Bengali culture. The culture of Bangladesh is deeply intertwined with the culture of the Bengal region. Basically, Bengali culture refers to the culture of Bangladesh. The Bengal Renaissance contained the seeds of a nascent political Indian nationalism which was the precursor in many ways to modern Indian artistic cultural expression.
Bangladeshi cuisine has been shaped by the region's history and river-line geography. Bangladesh has a tropical monsoon climate. The staple of Bangladesh is rice and fish. The majority of Bangladeshi people are ethnic Bengali, accustomed to Bengali cuisine, with a minority of non-Bengalis, many used to cuisines from different traditions and regions.
Saidpur is a city of Nilphamari district in Rangpur Division of Bangladesh. The city has become a very important communication hub for adjoining major district headquarters. Saidpur Airport is one of the domestic airports in Bangladesh. The Syedpur Railway Workshop, established in 1870, is the largest in Bangladesh and was the major railway workshop for Assam-Bengal railway. Historically the city has an Urdu-speaking community with close ties to Bihar.
Kolkata has many festivals throughout the year. The largest and most magnificently celebrated festival of the city is Durga Puja, and it features colourful pandals, decorative idols of Hindu goddess Durga and her family, lighting decorations and fireworks. Other major festivals are Diwali, Kali Puja, Holi, Saraswati Puja, Poush Parbon, Poila Boishakh, Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, etc.
The culture of West Bengal is an Indian culture which has its roots in Bengali literature, music, fine arts, drama and cinema. Different geographic regions of West Bengal have subtle as well as more pronounced variations between each other, with Darjeeling Himalayan hill region and Duars showing particularly different socio-cultural aspects.
The culture of Bengal defines the cultural heritage of the Bengali people native to eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, mainly what is today Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, where they form the dominant ethnolinguistic group and the Bengali language is the official and primary language. Bengal has a recorded history of 1,400 years. After the partition, Bangladeshi culture became distinct from the mainstream Bengali culture, thus their culture evolved differently, still there are many commonalities in Bangladeshi culture & West Bengali culture which connects them both together as Bengali culture.
The Boishakhi Mela is a Bengali celebration (mela) which takes place outside of Bangladesh. It is celebrated by the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada as well as many other countries with significant Bangladeshi populations.
Both festivals of Eid celebrated in the Muslim world include cuisines specific to countries and localities.
Old Dhaka is a term used to refer to the historic old city of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. It was founded in 1608 as Jahangirabad or Jahangirnagar, the capital of Mughal Province of Bengal and named after the Mughal emperor Jahangir. It is located on the banks of the Buriganga River. It was one of the largest and most prosperous cities of the Indian subcontinent and the center of the worldwide muslin trade. The then Nawab of Bengal Murshid Quli Khan shifted the capital from Dhaka to Murshidabad in the early-18th century. With the rise of Calcutta during the British rule, Dhaka began to decline and came to be known as the "City of Magnificent Ruins". The British however began to develop the modern city from the mid-19th century.
The Bengali Calendar, is a solar calendar used in the Bengal region of the South Asia. A revised version of the calendar is the national and official calendar in Bangladesh and an earlier version of the calendar is followed in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam. Unlike the traditional Indian Hindu calendar which starts with the month of Choitro, the Bengali calendar starts with Boishakh because of the reforms made during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar in Mughal Bengal. The first day of the Bengali year is known as Pohela Boishakh which is a public holiday in Bangladesh.
Kishorchak is a village in Bhogpur Gram panchayat in Kolaghat block of Tamluk sub-division of Purba Medinipur district in the state of West Bengal.Nearest town is Panskura.The village is surrounded by Namalbarh in west side, Bhogpur in east side and South Eastern Railway Zone in north and Kaminachak village in south. This village is situated near Bhogpur railway station. This railway station is main mode of transport for this village as well as other neighbouring village. Though NH6 is 5 km away from this village but people this village used it for only goods transportation, because there is no mode of public transport is available through NH6 from this village. Kishorchak Banamali High School is situated in the western side of the village and also a Bengali medium primary school is located in same side was established in 1927.
Bengali Muslims are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis. Comprising about two-thirds of the global Bengali population, they are the second-largest ethnic group among Muslims after Arabs. Bengali Muslims make up the majority of Bangladesh's citizens, and are the largest minority in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.
Mirzapur is a village in Ishwarganj Upazila of Mymensingh District in the Division of Mymensingh, Bangladesh.
The Old Dhakaites are an Indo-Aryan cultural group viewed as the original inhabitants of Dhaka. They are sometimes referred to as simply Dhakaites or Dhakaiya. Their history dates back to the Mughal period with the migration of Bengali cultivators and North Indian merchants to the city. The Bengali cultivators came to be known as Kutti and they speak Dhakaiya Kutti, a dialect of Bengali and the North Indian merchants came to be known as Khoshbas and they speak Dhakaiya Urdu, a dialect of Urdu. There are sizeable populations in other parts of Bangladesh. They have been described as a wealthy but very closed-off community; evidently being a minority in their own hometown. It is said that some people living in Greater Dhaka are even unaware of the existence of an Urdu-speaking non-Bihari minority community although their presence dates back centuries.
The following is a list of scheduled and expected events for the year 2025 in Bangladesh. 2025 (MMXXV) will be a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2025th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 25th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 6th year of the 2020s decade.
↑ Roy, Tirthankar (2007). "Out of Tradition: Master Artisans and Economic Change in Colonial India". The Journal of Asian Studies. 66 (4). Cambridge University Press: 963–991. doi:10.1017/s002191180700126x.
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