Three-day festival begins today in Shahzadpur Kaccharibari

The Shahzadpur Kaccharibari wears a festive look today, Baishakh 25, the birth anniversary of Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore. A three-day programme including a discussion and cultural events are the high points of the 155th birth festival of Tagore at the Kaccharibari, official sources said.

 Cultural Affairs minister Asaduzzaman Noor and health minister Mohammad Nasim will inaugurate the festival at the Rabindra Kaccharibari on Sunday May 8, according to the upazila administration.

Artistes from Dhaka and Kolkata give music and dance performances at the festival. A fair will also be organised at the high school premises of the Shahzadpur upazila.

“People of Shahzadpur wait for Baishakh 25 to observe the traditional Rabindra festival. It is the largest traditional festival for the people of Shahzadpur. Like other years, upazila administration has taken preparation to organise the festival and fair,” Md. Shamim Ahmed, the Shazadpur Upazila Nirbahi officer, said.

Tagore's grandfather Prince Dwarkanath had bought the estate in Shahzadpur from Zaminder Rani Bhabani of Natore in 1840, long before the poet's birth. The poet got the responsibility to maintain the estate, and visited Shahzadpur. He last visited Shahzadpur in 1901.

Despite being the landlord of Shahzadpur estate, Rabindranath loved and patronized poor farmers in this region. “Tagore donated 1200 acres of farming land in his estate for the ultra-poor farmers of Shahzadpur for cattle farming,” Nasim Uddin Malitha, Tagore researcher, told The Daily Star.