Significance of International Mother Language Day
The Bangla Language Movement of February 21, 1952, popularly known as Ekushey (the 21st),was a socio-politico-cultural movement in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) advocating the recognition of the Bangla language as an official language of Pakistan. Such recognition would allow Bangla to be used in government affairs.
In fact, the Language Movement sixty one years ago catalysed the assertion of Bengali national identity in the then Pakistan, and became a forerunner to Bengali nationalist movements, including the emergence of self-rule consciousness in 1954 general election, student movement in 1962, 6-point movement, uprising in 1969 and, subsequently, the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.
The supreme sacrifice of the martyrs of the language movement on February 21 (1952) became an epitome of the inspiration for sustaining self- consciousness and dignity as a nation. It established the only nation in the globe which is named after its language, Bangladesh. February 21 was such an epoch making event that it has been immortalised by global recognition as International Mother Language Day.
In 2000, Unesco declared February 21 as International Mother Language Day for the whole world to celebrate, in tribute to the Language Movement and the ethno-linguistic rights of people around the world. We as a nation feel proud today that Bangladesh, Bangla and the supreme sacrifice of our language movement are being pronounced, much-admired, gratefully remembered and honoured world wide.
The prestige and position of Bangla, the mother tongue of the people of Bengal, in day-to-day life can be traced back to the seventeenth century, as documented in the poems of Abdul Hakim (1620-1690) of Swandwip, Noakhali. The seventeenth century bard was hesitant to classify if not condemn those who were born in Bengal but hated Bangla. From the mid-19th century, Urdu language had been promoted as the lingua franca of Indian Muslims by political and religious leaders.
Khan Bahadur Ahsanullah (1873-1965), an educationist and social reformer, wrote in 1918, Bangabhasha o Musalman Shahittya (Bangla language and Literature of the Muslims), that one must respect Bangla and recognise its incomparability over other languages like Urdu, etc. Ahsanullah made this observation because of the attempts by contemporary intelligentsias to establish Urdu as the lingua franca of Muslims in Bengal.
As early as the late 19th century, social activists such as the Muslim feminist Roquia Sakhawat Hussain (1880-1932) chose to write in Bangla to reach out to the people and develop it as a modern literary language. Exactly twenty five years before February 1952, two papers were presented on the second day of the Two-day First Annual Literary Conference (February 27-28, 1927) of the Muslim Shahittya Shamaj (Muslim Literary Society) on the appropriateness of the use of Bangla in Muslim society in general and education in particular. Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) inaugurated the Conference.
Abul Hussain (1896-1938), the secretary and one of the founders of the Shahittya Shamaj, which led the Shikha Movement, wrote that the mother language barrier had been the major obstacle in the way of social development of the Muslim community in Bengal. The two wings (East Pakistan, also called East Bengal, and West Pakistan) of the state of Pakistan after its formation in 1947 split along cultural, geographical and linguistic lines. In 1948, the government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bangla-speaking majority of East Pakistan.
Facing rising sectarian tensions and mass discontent with the new law, the government outlawed public meetings and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka and other political activists defied the law and organised a protest on February 21, 1952. The movement reached its climax when police killed student demonstrators on that day. The deaths provoked widespread civil unrest. After years of conflict, the central government relented and granted official status to the Bangla language in 1956.
The Language Movement not only laid the foundations for ethnic nationalism in many of the Bengalis of East Pakistan but also heightened the cultural animosity between the authorities of the two wings of Pakistan. In fact, Ekushey played an important role in making Bengalis aware of their cultural and national heritage and ultimately led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. After 1971, even today, Ekushey has been a guiding philosophy for any movement against oppression, injustice, disparity and denying of civic rights, and in the comprehension of the socio-economic emancipation of the people of Bangladesh.
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