Remembering martyrdom in East Pakistan on the issue of recognising Bangla as State language in 1952

Nearly four years before the martyrdom of Abul Barkat, Abdul Jabbar, Rafiquddin Ahmad, Abdus Salam and Shafiur Rahman on February 21, 1952, polymath Syed Mujtaba Ali, linguist and Bengali litterateur, predicted dismemberment of Pakistan.

At a meeting of Sylhet Sahitya Sangsad (Sylhet Literary Council) on 30 November 1947, 105 days after the birth of Pakistan, Dr Ali, who knew occidental and oriental languages, said, “The repercussions of imposing Urdu as the language, dropping Bangla, will not do good in future. One day our people will revolt against Pakistan if Urdu is made the national language by edging out Bangla.”

A rare-breed academic in linguistics and a creative writer, Dr Ali, groomed at Santiniketan during the last decade of Rabindranath Tagore’s life, was then the principal of Bogra College.

His three-hour speech, armed with historical, linguistic and social references enraged the conservative Muslim gentry who tried their best to humiliate him in many ways, but an intrepid Ali thundered even more clearly: “If Urdu is imposed on East Pakistan despite its reluctance, then naturally many Urdu-speaking idiots will try to exploit East Pakistan only through language. As a result, the people will one day revolt and become isolated from West Pakistan”.

He added that when the Arabs tried to impose Arabic language on Iran and Turkey after conquering them, it was a complete failure. “The Mughals also wanted to impose Persian on us but couldn't,” he said.

Ten days after Ali Saheb’s (as he used to be called fondly) oration, on December 6, 1948, a large gathering of students took place inside the campus of Dhaka University. The demand for the status of Bangla as the state language was announced and Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad was formed.

The new body demanded that Bangla be the medium of instruction in East Pakistan. Furthermore, Bangla should be the first language of the education department of East Pakistan as one hundred percent of East Pakistanis learn this language, it said. Urdu, it stressed, should be the second language or inter-provincial language.

The tiff over imposition of Urdu as the state language was seen but mildly at the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan even before the birth of sovereign state of Pakistan. On February 23, 1947, Dhirendranath Dutta, a CAP member, proposed an amendment to the use of Bangla language in government work.

His words are now history. “Sir, in moving this – the motion that stands in my name – I can assure the House that I do so not in a spirit of narrow Provincialism..... we are to consider that in our State it is found that the majority of the people of the State do speak the Bengali language then Bengali should have an honoured place even in the Central Government (of Pakistan).”

Sadly enough, when he was making a passionate speech, the chairman of CAP was Jogendranath Mandal, spokesman of scheduled castes and other backward Hindu Bengalis of undivided Bengal. Mandal, who sided with the Muslim League headed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, is now a favourite of subaltern historians.

Dutta embraced martyrdom during the Bangladesh liberation struggle when he was 86.

Jinnah, who is projected as a ‘secular’ politician for his famous speech on August 11, 1947 at the CAP assuring that Muslims will go to mosques, Hindus to temples and Christians to churches, was hypocritical.

Reminisces Amalendu Bhushan Chowdhuri (84), now a leading functionary of CPI(ML) Liberation, “I was a school student at Kishoreganj of Mymensing district, Surma Mail was the longest-distance train. Jinnah travelled all through the train route, alighted at every junction to deliver a speech. Everywhere he said, ‘Islam is our religion’. He spoke in English and her sister Fatima Jinnah translated that into Urdu. Strangely, one who could not speak Urdu well and spoke in English campaigned for Urdu.”

However, the secular tradition, built by the language movement, is endangered by obscurant Hefazat-e-Islam (HeI) which came into limelight in 2013 when the Awami League was in power.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina keeps striking a compromise with HeI that demands death penalty for blasphemy and advocates for the separation of boys and girls in public schools, alongside implementation of stringent Islamic laws.

(IPA Service)

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