Ahmed brings out book on Language Movement

The sentiment of the Language Movement in 1952 was limited not only to the capital, but it rippled through different parts of the country, including Chittagong, where local political and cultural leaders created the "Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad" on February 4.

Aiming to bring together people of all strata, the Parishad distributed a leaflet narrating the discriminations of the then regime against the poor people of Chittagong.

In the leaflet, they called upon people to observe daylong hartal on February 21, 1952 over the demand of declaring Bangla as a state language.

In one of his articles in a new book, historian Muntassir Mamoon pointed out the contents of this leaflet and of seven other leaflets, which had been circulated by both the government and the Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad.

The contents of the leaflets were not published before; they appeared in the book "Rashtro Bhasha Andoloner Dalilpatra" (documents on the movement for state language).

Ahmed Publishing House has brought out the book, which is based on 36 documents on the Language Movement.

The book was compiled by Prof Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque and researcher MR Mahbub.

Mahbub said, "There are many books on the Language Movement, but the contents of the leaflets were not found anywhere."

The book also contains rare photographs of 1952, the US secret cable on the movement, and the proposal of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on state language.

Language Movement hero Prof Fule Hossain unveiled the book in front of stall no. 397 of Ahmed Publishing House at the Amar Ekushey Granthamela 2016.

In the preface, Kashem said they tried to give a vivid description of the movement to readers through these documents.

Underscoring the need for having knowledge on history, he also said the roadmap of the future needed to be built by analysing the past.

Meanwhile, two poetry books titled "Amader Sommilito Medha Talikar Din" and "Ja Kichhu Swargiyo Chilo", by Tushar Das and Aftab Ahmad respectively, were launched at the National Museum yesterday.

The first book contains 63 poems and the second one 37. Both were published by Fahrenheit MCL.

A total of 140 new books arrived yesterday. With these, the number of new books published in this fair in the last 17 days reached 1,929.