On the first day of every year, Saiful receives more text messages than the other 364 days combined. But he seldom replies to the shower of attention lavished upon him on this day. A sense of guilt and apathy weighs upon him as he ignores the birthday wishes pouring into his phone.
January 1 is his birthday on paper, but he was not born on this day. What makes it worse for him is that although he feels squeamish about asking if his friends use false dates of birth as well, he does not sincerely believe most of them use their real date of births.
Mahmud was born on July 7 but everyone thinks he was born on January 1. He wryly responds to the birthday wishes on his Facebook wall only as a formality.
In a few months, Mahmud will turn 18 and he will have to register for the National ID Card.
“I don’t know which date to put on my National ID, my actual date of birth, or the one on paper.”
Mahmud is just one student among thousands, who point their fingers toward their schools.
“When we were registering for the SSC exams, the teachers made us put down January 1 as our date of birth. Only a few of us protested. The teachers said this would ensure we got to work a full year in public service.”
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Public service – government jobs are more appropriate in this context – is looked upon as a holy grail by a generation of Bangladeshis. The job security and prestige associated with government employment rivals many other lucrative employment prospects. Pension and other post-employment benefits are considered part and parcel of the entire package. For these reasons, many parents and teachers encourage and proactively alter the date of birth of children.
Very few people get to have a say in the matter. The imposed will of the parents or the teachers forges a crucial piece of information that hounds people throughout their lives.
Shishir says: “To put up with the charade, I have to celebrate the false date as my birthday. At this rate, I am definitely going to forget when I was actually born.”
Prof Syed Manzoorul Islam says: “Many parents believe they are doing what is best for their children. They are blind to the fact that it is a crime. But I hope the government-mandated registration of birth certificates and digital National ID cards will help dispel this illusion. Perhaps, in 20 years or so, we will not have to see anymore false birthdays on documents.”
Prof Biswajit Ghosh of Dhaka University offered his take on the debacle. He says people find it easier to calculate a person’s age if their birthday is on January 1.
Even on many digital platforms, the default date is January 1, which people often do not change.
The actual extent of the false numbers has never been looked into before. Immigration & Passports Department Assistant Director Md Hafizur Rahman admitted there are quite a large number of applications with January 1 as the date of birth, but they have never been authenticated.
He said it is incredibly difficult to ascertain the number of fake dates of birth.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
