Bangladeshis today, and during the day past, celebrated Ekushey February, the commemoration of the events of February 21, 1952, when student protestors were killed demonstrating for the cause to retain Bengali as a state language in, then, East Pakistan.
A quick rundown of the stultifying events of that day, which lasted only 30 minutes will help fix some idea of the import of the days’ commemoration.
Setting upon to break a state mandated curfew, activists who supported the so-called language gathered on February 21 around what was then Dhaka University.”
As the Daily Star writes, “[the] overwhelming majority of the demonstrators were young students who were protesting the then Pakistan government’s evil design for forcing Urdu on the [Bengali] people of East Pakistan as their state language.”
“They were breaking the curfew to advance towards what was the State Assembly Building back then near where the Central Shaheed Minar is now, to place their demand for Bangla as a state language, to the then assembly members. But police bullets stopped their advance, killing the language martyrs.”
“The stopping of the advance however proved to be only temporary as the killings pushed the movement into a higher gear, which ultimately forced the Pakistani government to accept Bangla as a state language in 1956. In 2000, Unesco declared February 21 as International Mother Language Day.”
Though only four individuals were killed on that day, the event resonated in the people’s communal history of Bengal in much the way the killing of five men during what is known as the Boston Massacre of 1770 was the figurative trigger for the body of compromises and conflicts that eventually led to the American Revolution. Both events came to register a founding moment, not a moment of dissolution, as the relevant authorities might have hoped.
Indeed, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has taken the bearer of symbolically foundational day, February 21st, the International Mother Language Day and has founded, on this day, an organization that will actually act to preserve languages the world over.
Again, the Daily Star reports,
“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday inaugurated the International Mother Language Institute and said the institute will contribute to preservation of all languages of the world.”
“After unveiling the institute’s plaque at Segun Bagicha, she said, “The main objective of constructing the institute is to practise different languages, conduct research on them and save languages which are on the brink of extinction.”
“The premier said her government wants to make it an autonomous institution with modern facilities for research, and sought cooperation of litterateurs, language researchers and people in this regard.”
This is good news for Bangladeshis the world over and speaks to the spirit of community that engulfed the original march and much of the nationalist politics that enflamed Bangladeshi history. Nevertheless even on a well-augured day like this, the politics of spite arose to splendid heights. Without naming names, Sheikh Hasina reminded Bangladeshi’s that the BNP in power until recently had halted construction on the institute. She said “Questions can be asked if those people, who do not pay respect to their mother tongue and culture, are real Bangladeshis or do they believe in the country’s independence, art, culture and heritage. If they are Bangladeshis, why had they stopped the construction?”
This is hardly an opening salvo: the recent weeks have roiled politics in Bangladesh with charges and recriminations. Todays move just shows that to the victor goes the speaker’s podium. One wonders whether the victor in office in Shangshad Bhabhan will have the strength and forbearance of her convictions to only speak in terms that will help increase the welfare of her people.
