Alienating Bengali

Photo: Prabir Das

Some days ago the High Court issued a rule on the government to explain in two weeks why it should not be directed to use Bengali in all sectors including offices and courts of the country. The court also directed the government to use Bengali in all advertisements and vehicle registration plates. Obviously, the initiative taken by the court is praiseworthy. In a few weeks we will be able to see some more Bengali letters before our eyes. Unfortunately, for some youngsters they are letters of a language.
No, these kids are not foreigners. They are Bangladeshis but their educational upbringing makes them foreigners in their own land. In Bangladesh, a good number of students are studying under either the American or the British curriculum where there is little or no room for learning Bengali with adequate care. Through this education system they are taught to take up foreign culture and language, ignoring their own culture and traditions. The outcome is obvious. Adib, a student of class 5 of a very prominent English medium school of Dhaka, can't understand most of his Bengali question papers and can't write a single correct sentence in Bengali. Not only Adib, there are thousands like him. These students are sharp but their learning environment is alienating them from their own culture. Adib's mother Sharmin Khan says, “Adib makes brilliant results in other subjects but he is very weak in Bengali. I have managed a house tutor for Adib only so he learns Bengali properly.”
According to our Education Policy, 2010 English medium schools which follow the international curriculum must teach their students Bengali language and Bangladesh Studies as separate subjects. In schools, the students are studying Bengali only as a course to obtain better grades. They seldom have any emotional ties with Bengali. Merina Amin, a Bengali teacher of a prominent English medium school of Dhaka shares her experience, “Actually these young kids spend most of their time either watching English TV programmes, or reading English books. In the classroom they have to speak in English, at home they speak in English and in their leisure they spend their time with English. So it is very hard to convey the appeal of their mother tongue to these students.”
Even in universities, Bengali is a much ignored language. In the education policy of 2010, it was made compulsory for all the departments of all universities to include at least two courses on Bengali language and culture. Very few departments of the public universities have obeyed this instruction. Almost all the private universities have ignored it completely. The language dilemma in some universities is rather serious. Most Bangladeshi students have to pass 12 years of their schooling in Bengali medium. After getting admitted into university, these students find all of their reference books in English. As Shahidul Islam, a student of Dhaka University, says, “I have come from a remote area and my academic background up to higher secondary level is purely Bengali. After getting admitted to the Chemistry department of Dhaka University I felt very proud but honestly speaking I have also been struggling to cope with the difficult English books.”
In many countries like Japan and Germany, where students continue their education in their native language, all textbooks and reference books of various disciplines have been translated into their mother tongue. But in Bangladesh, till now no major efforts have been taken to translate the reference books. As a result many students have to suffer from this kind of language barrier.
Dr Kaiser Haq, a teacher of the Department of English, University of Dhaka says, “The ways of teaching language in schools and colleges is not appropriate. In the schools they should allocate 3 hours for reading and writing to teach any language. None of the schools of Bangladesh do this either for teaching English or teaching Bengali. That's why our students can't have good command in Bengali or English. Keeping these problems alive in the educational system, the government's initiative to write signboards in Bengali will not produce any substantial outcome.”  
In government offices the situation is just as vague. After the promulgation of the Bengali Language Introduction Act, 1987 all the government offices were supposed to use Bengali for their official purposes. Not only that, Article 3 of our constitution says, “The state language of the republic is Bangla.” But all these directives could not bring any positive change in our public offices. Surprisingly, the highest level of negligence in this regard has come from our judicial services. Lower courts have been using English and Bengali in all of its proceedings. Even the Supreme Court, the highest constitutional body does not use Bengali in their proceedings. Using English in the lower courts creates a lot of misunderstanding between the lawyers and their clients,” says Advocate Shishir Manir a senior lawyer of Dhaka Bar.
The initiative of writing billboards, vehicles number plates and advertisements in Bengali is good. But this initiative portrays that our nation's consciousness on billboards and advertisements is much more than what we are learning in the schools and what cultures we are adopting. If we want to give our mother tongue its proper honour, we should cultivate Bengali in our everyday lives in a proper and correct manner. Passing the heritage and richness of Bengali to our future generation is our prime duty to show respect to our mother tongue. It is also essential to protect the language. And to do so, there are better, more effective ways than writing billboards and advertisements in Bengali.   

Photo: Anisur Rahman