Nabanna

Nabanna

November to December; during the Hindu month of Agrahayana (Margasirsa)

The harvest festival of Nabanna (sometimes spelled Navanna ) is a very popular ceremony among the Hindu rice growers of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. It typically honors the Goddess Lakshmi, who symbolizes wealth and fertility, and takes place during Agrahayana, a Bangla month that falls between November and December.
According to folk custom, a community cannot enjoy the new rice crop until Lakshmi is first offered nabanna ("new food" or "new rice" in Bangla). Farmers will cut and husk a special variety of rice and typically offer it prepared as rice porridge. In some cases, ancestral spirits and local deities are also the intended recipients of the offering. Other customs during the festival include greeting the moon with lamps, giving children gifts and sweetened milk, and offering rice and other types of food to crows. According to folklore, the flight patterns of the birds that pick up the food can foretell a community's fortunes.
The celebration in the capital, Dhaka, differs from those in agricultural regions, as residents employ the holiday to make a political statement and reassert Bangladesh's cultural independence from Pakistan.

CONTACTS:
Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation, National Tourism Organization
233 Airport Rd.
Tejgaon
Dhaka 1215 Bangladesh
www.bangladeshtourism.gov.bd