For the first time since the July Uprising, the Bengali New Year—Pohela Boishakh—will be celebrated on Monday, April 14. This year’s celebration is being designed with that political backdrop in mind, and one of the most notable motifs is a facial structure resembling the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The traditional title “Mangal Shobhajatra” has been dropped following much debate, and the event organized by Dhaka University will instead be known as the “Boishakhi Celebration Procession.”

According to sources, the procession will feature large, medium, and small motifs—six of them in large form. Among the most prominent is the “face of fascism” motif, placed at the forefront, which symbolizes the deposed leader through an aggressive female face with sharp teeth and two upright horns. When questioned, Dhaka University Vice-Chancellor Professor Niaz Ahmed Khan stated that if anyone sees a resemblance to a specific individual, it's a matter of personal interpretation; the intention is to present a symbolic stance against fascism as a whole.

Other major motifs include a wooden tiger, a hilsa fish, a typographic figure titled “36 July,” a dove of peace, a palanquin, and a symbolic water bottle representing Mugdha, a youth killed during the July Movement. The 15-foot bottle, made of iron rods and filled with smaller empty bottles, pays tribute to the lives lost in the protests.

Additional motifs in the celebration include ten Sultanate and Mughal-era masks, eighty fascist face models, twenty colorful pinwheels, two hundred tiger heads, eight palm-leaf soldiers, ten fishing tools (polo), five Tuhin birds, six traditional fish traps (chai), four fans, twenty head shields (mathal), twenty horses, five plows, five fish baskets, and a hundred-foot canvas of folk art.

Walls of the Faculty of Fine Arts will display motifs like the traditional Rajshahi earthenware “shokher hari,” while the wall of the Zainul Children’s Center will feature patterns inspired by the Santals' heritage mud-wall painting style. In a show of global solidarity, a watermelon motif will represent the oppressed Palestinian Muslims and their ongoing resistance.