DHAKA
— A growing controversy has emerged in Bangladesh regarding the government’s holiday allocation for Durga Puja, the largest religious festival for the country’s Hindu minority.
While several media outlets and official statements have highlighted a “five-day holiday” for the celebrations, community leaders and activists are calling out what they term a misleading representation of the actual state-sanctioned leave.
According to the official government calendar published by the Ministry of Public Administration for 2026, only two days—October 20 and 21—are designated as official executive holidays for Durga Puja. The narrative of a five-day break relies on combining these two days with an adjustable day off on Thursday, October 22, and the standard weekend on Friday and Saturday, October 23 and 24.
Critics point out that merging standard weekly rest days with religious holidays inflates the figures without offering real accommodation. Furthermore, key rituals of the festival—such as Shasthi, Saptami, and Ashtami—fall on regular working days, leaving many devotees without official time off during the most significant parts of the celebration.
The disparity is particularly stark for private-sector employees, banks, and daily wage earners, who do not benefit from executive bridge holidays.
Hindu rights groups argue that portraying standard weekends as festival concessions obscures the community’s demand for dedicated, multi-day official holidays that reflect the full duration of their primary religious festival.
They are calling on authorities for greater transparency and equal rights rather than adjusted calendar figures.
