Mon National Day ( mnw, တ္ၚဲကောန်ဂကူမန်, rungmoam kaun kay kaw mon; my, မွန်အမျိုးသားနေ့; th, วันชาติมอญ) is an annual national day that commemorates the founding of

Hanthawaddy kingdom ( Mon) ( Burmese) , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Hongsarwatoi (Hanthawaddy) Pegu , common_name = Hongsarwatoi (Hanthawaddy) Kingdom / Ramannya (Ramam) , era = Warring states , status = Kingdom , event_pre ...

. Mon National Day is celebrated by the

Mon people The Mon ( mnw, ဂကူမည်; my, မွန်လူမျိုး‌, ; th, มอญ, ) are an ethnic group who inhabit Lower Myanmar's Mon State, Kayin State, Kayah State, Tanintharyi Region, Bago Region, the Irrawaddy Delta, and se ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

, and by overseas Mon communities. The day is held on the first waning day of the lunar month of

Tabodwe Tabodwe ( my, တပို့တွဲ) is the eleventh month of the traditional Burmese calendar. Festivals and observances *Full moon of Tabodwe **Harvest Festival () **Mon National Day Rakhine tug of war festival, Yatha Hswe Pwe. *Pagoda fes ...

(''Maik'' in Mon) in the

Burmese calendar The Burmese calendar ( my, မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ်, , or , ; Burmese Era (BE) or Myanmar Era (ME)) is a lunisolar calendar in which the months are based on lunar months and years are based on sidereal years. The calendar is ...

, following

Māgha Pūjā Māgha Pūjā (also written as Makha Bucha Day) is the second most important Buddhist festival after Vesak, celebrated on the full moon day of the third lunar month in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Sri Lanka and on the full moon day of Tabaung in ...

Origins

Mon National Day was first celebrated in 1947, marking the mythic foundation of last Mon kingdom, Hanthawaddy (now centred in

Bago Bago may refer to: Places Myanmar * Bago, Myanmar, a city and the capital of the Bago Region * Bago District, a district of the Bago Region * Bago Region an administrative region * Bago River, a river * Bago Yoma or Pegu Range, a mountain rang ...

), in CE 573. The origins of Mon National Day parallel that of

Karen New Year The Karen New Year ( ksw, ကညီနံၣ်ထီၣ်သီ), also known as the Kayin New Year ( my, ကရင်နှစ်သစ်ကူး), is one of the major holidays celebrated by the Karen people. The Karen New Year falls on the f ...

, as both were colonial-era celebrations that fostered the ethnic identity of these communities. The former was established by the United Mon Association via resolution, in October 1947 in the village of Kamawuk in Mudon Township. In 1974, the

Burma Socialist Programme Party The Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), ; abbreviated , was Burma's ruling party from 1962 to 1988 and sole legal party from 1964 to 1988. Party chairman Ne Win overthrew the country's democratically elected government in a coup d'ét ...

-led government officially recognized Mon State Day on 19 March, to celebrate the establishment of Mon State. Mon National Day is currently not recognized by the Burmese national government as a national holiday. However, in 2013, the Mon State Government expressed interest in organizing celebrations for the holiday. That same year, Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's de facto leader, spoke at large-scale Mon National Day celebrations held at Yangon's People's Square and Park. In 2016, activists and festivity organizers petitioned the national government to observe Mon National Day as a public holiday. Since 2017, the Mon State Government has earmarked funding for state-wide Mon National Day celebrations. In 2018, Mon and Kayin State Governments jointly earmarked funding for inaugural Mon National Day celebrations in Kayin State.

Celebrations

Mon National Day is celebrated by Mon communities throughout Myanmar, primarily in Mon and Kayin States,

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

and Taninthayi Regions. Mon National Day in

was first held in

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated populati ...

in 1982. Countries with significant Mon populations, including in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, also observe the occasion. Mon National Day is marked with literature competitions, photo exhibitions, traditional boxing competitions, and traditional songs and dances performed by a popular Mon drama troupes and other cultural shows. Traditional Mon musical instruments, food and handicrafts are also sold during festivities. During the festivities, many celebrants don traditional Mon outfits, consisting of red-colored '' longyis'' and white tops.

Gallery

File:ဗီုစၟတ်သမ္တီ တ္ၚဲကောန်ဂကူမန် ပွိုၚ်တိုက် မရနုက်ကဵု (၇၁) ဝါ ဌာနကွာန်ဟံၚ်ဂါမ်.jpg File:ဗီုကွာ်မံၚ်ကရောမ်ပၞာန်တ္ၚဲကောန်ဂကူမန်မရနုက်ကဵု(၇၃)ဝါကွာန်ဟံၚ်ဂါမ်.jpg File:Mon-National-Day-2019-Thai-Mon3.jpg File:Mon-National-Day-2019-Thai-Mon8.jpg File:Mon-National-Day-2019-Thai-Mon4.jpg File:Mon-National-day-2019-thai-Mon1.jpg File:Mon-National-Day-2019-Thai-Mon6.jpg File:Mon-National-Day-2019-Thai-Mon7.jpg File:Mon National Day 2006 .jpg File:Mon National Day 62 Denmark.jpg File:Mon National Day 73rd Central .jpg File:71 anniversary of mon national day.jpg

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mon National Day Observances set by the Burmese calendar