Why Bangladesh’s Pretense Of Supporting 'Mother Tongue' is Hollow

The world celebrates 21 February as International Mother Tongue Day.

This is a day dedicated to the most important indigenous form of cultural expression, one’s own mother tongue, and is essentially considered as a day of celebration of plurality.

How apt is this notion in the case of East Bengal? 

Soon after partition, the demand for making Bengali the state language of Pakistan had been going on for some time. Given the call for a general strike, the Pakistani Government banned all gatherings in Dhaka University and adjoining areas by invoking Section 144 of the law on 18 February.

Nevertheless, in the afternoon of 21 February, when the students spontaneously violated Article 144 and took the initiative to take out a procession towards the East Bengal Legislative Council, which is currently part of Dhaka University's Jagannath Hall, the police started lathi-charging and firing. Several people were killed.

How Many Martyrs?

The typical narrative says that four students of Dhaka University—Barkat, Rafiq, Salam, Jabbar—died in police firing. Another martyr, namely Shafiur Rahman, died the next day. Therefore, these two figures, four and five, are considered as the number of martyrs.

For example, at the Bangla Academy of Dhaka, statues of these five martyrs have been placed. Similarly, in the Central Shaheed Minar, the prime Language Martyrs Monument, abstract art exists but its four smaller side structures are supposed to represent the four martyrs of 21 February and the middle, larger one, the mother language.

How many martyrs were really there? Eight people, confirmedly, died due to police firing on that day. The eight confirmed dead people are: Abdus Salam, Abul Barkat, Abdul Jabbar, Rafiq Uddin Ahmed, Shafiur Rahman, Ahualullah, Abdul Awal, and an unidentified boy. 

Nevertheless, the upper limit is anyone’s guess. The Azad put the figure at nine, with the allegation that many other bodies were allegedly dumped. Lal Khan, an exiled author from Pakistan, put the figure at 26.

If the number is more than eight, the question arises, which of the dead persons have been mentioned? Does it have something to do with the political constituency of the Awami League in question and if the dead person’s identity matches with that constituency?

We cannot rule out these possibilities since no certain number is available even after more than seven decades of the incident, and even after half a century of the formation of Bangladesh. 

The typical narrative says that the police fired on the students. Among the persons mentioned above, Abdul Jabbar came for treatment of his mother-in-law to Dhaka. Rafiq Uddin Ahmed came to Dhaka for some shopping in connection with his own marriage. Abdul Awal was a rickshaw-puller. Ahualullah was a 10-year old boy of a mason. Shafiur Rahman died in the morning of 22 February on his way to his workplace when the police again fired on that day. Abdus Salam was a school drop-out and was working in ‘Directorate of Industries’ in Dhaka. Only one of the persons, Abul Barkat, was a student of Dhaka University. 

Mother Tongue versus State Language

Now, the movement was to make Bengali the official language of Pakistan. Those who participated in the movement had Bengali as their mother tongue.

These two facts may have become juxtaposed, creating an unwelcome perception. A movement for mother language would like to celebrate every person’s mother tongue and promote its use. On the other hand, the movement for recognition of Bengali as a state (official) language means only securing employment and other benefits for Bengali-speaking people, no more, no less. The language movement never made the demand for recognition of the mother tongue of any other people of Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Many countries, like Switzerland, South Africa, or Russia, generally encourage people to retain their mother tongues. These countries recognise many languages at the national level or at regional levels so that people are not forced to abandon their mother tongue.

For example, Switzerland, with a tiny population of about nine million people, has four official languages - German, French, Italian and Romansh. South Africa has recognised 12 languages, including Afrikaans, Swazi and Zulu. Russia has granted recognition to 35 regional official languages, apart from its national language of Russian. All these countries have lesser population compared to Bangladesh, which has not recognised any non-Bengali language at any level. 

Is it the case that Bangladesh somehow has much less intrinsic diversity, language wise? To put it in a proper context, we have the story of West Bengal, the other part of Bengal that went to India, with less than two-thirds of the population of Bangladesh and Bengali as the predominant language. West Bengal has recognised, at some level, languages like Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, Odia, Santhali, Punjabi, Kamtapuri, Rajbanshi, Kurmali, Kurukh, and Telugu.

Actually, successive governments of Bangladesh, starting from Mujibur Rahman, had no respect for any other language of any other community apart from Bengali.

The case could be illustrated by the example of the Chakmas, an indigenous group living along the Chittagong Hill Tracts, having their own language, and following a school of Buddhism.

We may remember the advice of newly independent Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujibur to Chakma leader Manabendra Narayan Larma — ‘Become Bengalis.’ In other words, Mujib, the builder of the legacy of the mother language movement, simply refused to accept the Chakma right to use their mother tongue.  

The Bangladesh government did not stop with mere advice to the Chakmas by asking them to adopt Bengali. He attacked the Chakmas in a way that not even the British could have imagined. Many thousands of Chakmas died of state persecution and thousands emigrated out of Bangladesh to India.

Furthermore, Chakmas are not the only tribal group in Bangladesh. There are Marmas, Santhals, Mros, Tanchangyas, Bawms, Tripuris, Khasis, Khumis, Kukis, Garos, and Bisnupriya Manipuris. None of them had any different experience regarding recognition of their own language and culture. 

This attitude of Bangladesh—the supposed inheritors of the mother language movement—shows their lack of respect for any indigenous culture, especially for anyone’s mother tongue as a repository of cultural values, including their own.

Celebrating 21 February as Mother Language day for a Chakma victim would be inappropriate unless we want to insult the victims of inhumane sufferings whose mother language and indigenous culture were systematically destroyed by the Bangladeshi state.