The movement centering on mother tongue started from the birth of Pakistan state by combining two different nationalities speaking different languages, living in two regions located at a distance of about two thousand kilometers and this language movement is considered as the first step on the path of creation of Bangladesh state.
This day was observed as Martyrs’ Day in Bangladesh until UNESCO declared the day as International Mother Language Day in 1999. In Bangladesh, many people know this history. But there is a history of many more struggles, which led to the creation of the context of this movement.
How
movement started from language:
The debate over language started long before the partition of India based on the two-nation theory in 1947.
Language activists Abdul Matin and Ahmed Rafiq in their book titled Bhasha Andolon- Itihas O Tatporjo (ভাষা আন্দোলন-ইতিহাস ও তাৎপর্য) have written, “The first battle was mainly confined to the field of literature and culture.”
According to the description of this book, litterateurs talked about this issue in the early forties even before the partition of the country. At that time, there were different views on the pros and cons of the four languages- Bengali, Urdu, Arabic and English, among Bengali Muslim litterateurs, teachers and politicians.
Abdul Matin and Ahmed Rafiq have written, “Language movement was not an isolated case. It started several decades before the original movement began and secular nationalism of Bengali Muslims has worked behind this.”
Political
and economic context:
After the formation of the Pakistan state was confirmed, the Urdu-Bengali debate resurfaced. In an editorial in Millat, the important newspaper of that time, it was written, “There can be no greater slavery than accepting a language other than the mother tongue as the state language.”
Gradually, economics and politics became part of that debate. In 1947, in the daily Azadi newspaper, writer and journalist Abdul Haque wrote, “Immediately after the declaration of Urdu as the state language, every person who could communicate in Urdu would qualify for the job, and every Bengali-speaking person will become unfit for jobs.”
Bengali-speaking people were also worried about the cultural differences between the people of the two territories located at a distance of two thousand kilometers.
Sowing
the seeds of disbelief:
In 1947, Dr. Ziauddin Ahmad, the then vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, proposed to make Urdu the state language of Pakistan. Then the debate over language reawakened. By that time, the self-exploration of the Muslim Bengali began.
In 1947, within a few months of the partition of the country, Urdu and English were used excluding Bengali from Pakistan’s first currency, stamps, train tickets, postcards etc. After this announcement of the Pakistan Public Service Commission, a protest rally of students and intellectuals was held in Dhaka.
Bengali officials of the commission staged a protest demanding the use of the Bengali language in government work. In 1948, the Chief Minister of East Pakistan at the time of the formation of Pakistan, who later became the Governor-General of Pakistan, Khwaja Nazimuddin, in a legislative assembly session said, “These have been printed before the debate related to language begin though not everyone accepted his statement.”
Formation
of Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad:
At that time, intellectuals expressed their worry that if Urdu is imposed instead of their mother tongue, the next generation of Bengali speakers would become illiterate, and the very existence of the Bengali language would be jeopardized. This is considered to be a big blow to the practice of mother tongue independently.
The feeling of resentment in the minds of Bengalis about these issues has been building since then. Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad was formed towards the end of that year.
Many including Nurul Haque Bhuiyan of Tamaddun Majlish, an Islamic Cultural Organization of that time, Shamsul Haque, the then parliament member, Oli Ahad, founder of the East Pakistan Muslim Student League, Syed Nazrul Islam, the first interim president of Bangladesh, Mohammad Toaha, founder of the East Pakistan Student Federation, were its members who secretly conducted the activities in the beginning.
Muhammad
Ali Jinnah and his inflexible position:
In the then Pakistan state, Bengali speakers were the majority than Urdu speakers. Then on March 21, 1948, during his visit to East Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah at an assembly at the Race Course ground (now Suhrawardy Udyan) made it clear that Urdu would be the only state language of Pakistan.
Many people present at this rally immediately protested. This declaration can be said to be the beginning of the end of Bengali’s dream about the new state. From the beginning, Jinnah expressed his inflexible attitude about establishing Urdu as the state language.
Bengalis believed that Urdu was made into the state language with the intention to establish political and economic domination over the Bengalis and to exploit them. The pillar of distrust towards Pakistan was created in the minds of Bengalis.
The language and culture differences were appearing more strongly. Not religion, rather the concept of Bengali nationalism started becoming clear. On the other hand, another reason for their aversion to the Bengali language was that the then Urdu-speaking people considered Bengali culture to be ‘Hinduani’.
The
creation of deadly fire spark:
Even after the death of Jinnah, various proposals and counter-proposals regarding the state language continued. From the partition till the beginning of 1952, the Bengalis have strongly expressed their dislike about the state language Urdu.
In response, the movement continued intermittently, but the most terrible fire spark in this movement was born when the final decision to make Urdu the only state language was taken at the assembly of Pakistan on January 26, 1952.
Despite being a resident of East Bengal, Khawaja Nazimuddin coming to visit Dhaka on January 27, 1952, repeated Jinnah’s speech at a rally at Paltan. At that time, many people protested by shouting the slogan ‘We want Bangla as the state language’ in strong protest.
What
happened on the 21st of February
It is said that Khawaja Nazimuddin’s position and his speech due to political reasons added a new dimension to the language movement. His announcement only added to the sense of deprivation in the minds of the Bengalis of East Pakistan.
Rejecting Khawaja Nazimuddin’s statement, spontaneous strikes and demonstrations started in East Pakistan from the next day. Here the students of Dhaka University played an important role.
People from the political, cultural and professional communities of East Pakistan took part at the conference led by Mawlana Bhashani. On February 21, a general strike was declared. Section 144 was declared at Dhaka University and its surrounding areas to prevent the strike. Violation of the curfew resulted in Martyr's Day.
On that day in 1952, Muhammad Mahfuz Hossain was working in the emergency department of the hospital as a student of Dhaka Medical College. In an interview given to BBC Bangla three years ago, the picture of that day has come to light in his description.
In that interview, he said, “I took three people to the hospital on the afternoon of 21st of February. Rafiq, who was shot in the forehead, was declared dead, and Barkat, who was shot in the thigh, died at night, right before my eyes.”
The students were shot near Dhaka Medical College.
He said, “Then we could hear a lot of noise from outside. We heard that many people were injured in the shooting. The emergency ward was full at the moment.
The exact number of martyrs in the language movement has not been determined today. Apart from Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and Shafiur, many others were martyred in the police firing that day and the next day.
Sowing
the seeds of the state of Bangladesh:
The killings failed to quell the movement for the mother tongue. The movement made it clear that the feeling of oneness in the minds of the inhabitants of a state created by combining the nationalities of two different languages in two territories at a distance of two thousand kilometers would probably not awaken.
However, on 7 May 1954, more than two years after this incident, the National Assembly of Pakistan recognized Bengali as a state language and adopted the resolution. It took two more years for the Bengali language to get the recognition of state language as per the constitution. The seeds of an independent state called Bangladesh were sown in this movement with the mother tongue.
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