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Bangla Language Day
procession in Dhaka University
Bangla Language
Movement: A Synopsis of Events
Bangla Language Day, popularly known
as Ekushe (21) February, is one of the most significant days, not in
Bangladesh only, but in human history because on that day the
valiant Bangalee boys gave their lives to defend their sweet mother
tongue, Bangla language. Over the centuries people gave their lives
for love, faith, freedom, nation and the state. But on 21 February
1952, ever in history, a bunch of young Bangalee students gave their
lives in a protest rally at the Dhaka university campus against the
Pakistani authority’s attempt to impose Urdu (as the state language
of Pakistan) over the 70 million Bangalees of East Bangla (then East
Pakistan).
Politically conscious and culturally
advanced Bangalees of East Bangla were instrumental in the creation
of the British pampered Islamic state Pakistan. Although the
Lahore Proposal (proposed by a Bangalee, Sher-e-Bangla AK Fazlul
Huq) originally proposed a confederation of Muslim majority states
for Pakistan, the proposal was never unearthed since the partition
(1947). Since the birth of Pakistan, the rulers of Pakistan motioned
to colonize the Bangalees (and the Baluch, the Pathans, the Pustus)
culturally, economically, ideologically (dominant ideology has
always been Islam), linguistically and politically. In 1948, the
year after the partition Jinnah, the self-proclaimed champion of
Islam (which constitutes only the addition of an Islamic hat on his
black suit, not the abandonment of his favorite drink, scotch and
favorite breakfast, bacon) and the founder of so-called Islamic
state Pakistan, declared that “Urdu and Urdu only, will be the
state language of Pakistan”. The people (especially the
university students) of Bangladesh protested against Jinnah’s
presumptuous statement. Among the politicians only Dhirendra Nath
Datta stood against Jinnah’s statement in the parliament and
proposed Bangla (the language of the majority) as the state language
of Pakistan. But like the Lahore proposal Datta’s state
language bill was shoved under the carpet. Four years later, on 26
January 1952, Khaza Nazimuddin, the premier of Pakistan, assuming
that the state language issue being considerably subsided,
reiterated Jinna’s statement, in a public meeting at the Paltan
ground, to secure his position in the parliament. The pro-Pakistani
newspapers gave Nazimuddin’s speech massive media coverage. The
ruling Muslim leaguers and their Islamic brethren started scratching
their beards in anticipation of camels, deserts and dates in this
life and 70 lusty houries hereafter.
The students of Dhaka University,
unlike the goatee buffoons in the establishment, burst into a
vehement protest against Nazimuddin’s speech the very next day and
two of the leading student organizations, East Pakistan Jubo
(Youth) League and East Pakistan Students’ League,
organized a protest meeting and rally at the Amtala (the grassy
foyer under the old Mango tree in front of the Arts faculty) of
Dhaka University on 27 January 1952. In that meeting Habibur Rahman
Shelly, a distinguished student of Dhaka university, publicly
criticized Jinnah’s statement of 1948, gutless Liakat Ali’s
unabashed sycophancy and Nazimuddin’s mimicry of Jinnah.
In order to turn the language issue
into a systematic political movement the students of Dhaka
University later formed an Action (Sangram) Council and elected
Abdul Matin the convener of the council. Under the banner of this
council three students organizations, East Pakistan Jubo League,
East Pakistan Students’ League and the United Students’ Sangram
(Action) Council held a students’ strike and protest rally in the
Dhaka University campus on 30 January 1952. Khalek Newas Khan of
Mymensingh chaired that meeting. This meeting was a warm up call for
the Bangalees of East Bangla.
All Party State Language Action
Council
On 31 January 1952 a conference of the
leaders of all opposition parties were held in the Dhaka Bar Council
Library. Maulana Bhasani, the leader of East Pakistan Awami League,
called the conference. Leaders from Khilafat-e-Rabbani, Tamuddun
Majlish, University Students’ Sangram Parishad, East Pakistan Muslim
Students’ League and East Pakistan Youth League attended the
conference. In that conference All Party State Language Action
Council was formed and Maulana Bhasani was elected chairman of the
council and Golam Mahbub convener. This committee later declared 21
February to be the “Language Day” and called on strike, meetings and
procession all over the country. Around the country, thousands of
student activists from the three mainstream students’ organizations
took on the streets to make “Language Day” a political success.
4 February 1952: Student Protest
Meeting in Dhaka University
(recounted by Gaziul Huq)
“Being unable to wait for the chair, I
jumped on the table and after a short speech announced the action
plan. Ten thousand students were present in the university campus. A
large procession of ten thousand students rallied around the Dhaka
city and then gathered, following the procession, at the Beltala
of Dhaka University. In that public gathering people around the
province were called on to make 21 February Strike a success.”
“Around 3 pm on 20 February while we
were making a list of volunteers at Madhu’s canteen, we heard the
government making microphone announcement declaring curfew
(Emergency Act 144) for the following day (21 February). The
students present resented the official enforcement of the Act 144 on
the “Bangla Language Day”.
“Later that evening in a meeting at
the Salimullah Muslim Hall chaired by Fakir Shahabuddin it was
decided that Act 144 would not be tolerated. It had to be broken.
And this decision had to be passed on to the All Party
State Language Action Committee. Chaired by Abdul Momen another
meeting was held in Fazlul Huq hall and it was decided that Act 144
would have to be defied”.
Hartal
or Election? The dilemma of the opposition political parties
By the evening of 20 February 1952
three political forces took different stances with regard to the
action programs of the language day (21 February):
a. The establishment (Muslim League)
was determined to crash the language movement by any means even by
using severe force if necessary (they feared the secular aspect of
the language movement which, they were afraid, could undermine the
Islamic ideology on underlying the philosophical foundation of
Muslim League)
b. Due to the sudden declaration of
Emergency by the provincial government, the All Party State
Language Action Committee decided to withdrew the hartal
because they feared that the political turmoil that the hartal was
likely to cause might give the Nurul Amin government an opportunity
to defer the council election (which they were more concerned with)
indefinitely.
c. For the student leaders the issue
of the mother tongue was the only concern. So leaving the political
parties indulge in absurd political discussions, the Banga boys of
Dhaka University decided to break the curfew for the Bangla alphabet
and teach the parasitical Muslim league establishment a real lesson
for meddling with their mother tongue.
On this day while the students and
political activists were busy all over Dhaka city campaigning for
the hartal to force the govt to accept their demand to recognize
Bangla as the state language of Pakistan (Bangalees were majority),
few vans from the publicity department of the Muslim League
government kept announcing around city declaring curfew, under Act
144, on 21 February 1952 and government ban on all political
gathering, meeting and procession on that day.
21 February 1952
From 8 o’clock onwards, small groups
of school students from all over Dhaka city marched towards the
Dhaka University campus and assembling at the Arts faculty foyer of
Dhaka University. College students’ processions joined the school
boys by 9 am. By 9:30 thousands of students from different
university halls, Medical and Engineering College (now BUET) hostels
streamed into the assembly via various routes. By 11:30 the total
number of students assembled reached nearly 20-25 thousands. “We
demand Bangla be the state language” slogan filled the air. The
armed police began patrolling the streets in front of the Arts
Building and behind them the ‘tear gas’ squads took position and
waited for instruction.
Amtala, Arts Building, Dhaka University
In the midst of such a loaded
situation Gaziul Huq stood on the table to assume his role as the
president of the historic students’ assembly. The first speaker was
Samsul Huq (founder secretary of Awami league). As the
representative of All Party State Language Action Council, he
called on not to break the emergency Act 144. But before leaving the
assembly he expressed his personal solidarity with the language
movement. All on a sudden the news of police tear gas attack on one
of the students’ procession near Lalbagh spread in the assembly.
This news climaxed the already explosive situation. In that instance
both the convener and president of Dhaka University State
Language Action Council, Abdul Matin and Gaziul Huq, were giving
their speeches in support of breaking the emergency Act 144. The
explosive crowd shouted their consent to Huq and Matin’s decision.
“We won’t stand Act 144, we won’t ” slogans thundered the Dhaka
University campus. In the midst of such a huge upheaval Abdus Samad
Azad somehow detailed the plan for breaking the curfew. It was
famous “procession of ten”. He said if the massive crowd of 20-25
thousand goes out in procession it might lead to a horrible
situation. So he suggested that instead of the big crowd a small
procession of ten students would go out one after another. The
proctor of Dhaka University agreed with him and ordered university
staff to open the gate of the Arts faculty.
Thus started the famous “procession of
ten”. All participants of the procession voluntarily turned them in
to the police. Habibur Rahman Shelly led the first group. Abdus
Samad Azad the second group and Anwarul Huq and Obaidullah Huq Khans
led the third group. The university girls formed the fourth group.
Girls’ group was followed by a number of boys’ groups. It was an
unprecedented sight of self sacrifice in defense of Bangla language.
So far the whole protest movement was done peacefully.
But the police interference soon
turned the peaceful situation into a violent one. After few
processions went through the gate, the police, without any
provocation on the students’ part, started baton charge on the Arts
faculty gate and the road in front it. The riot police, positioned a
far, soon joined their mates by firing tear gas on the crowd. The
whole Arts faculty was enveloped with the tear gas. The students ran
towards the pond to wash their eyes. They washed their eyes and
brought with them wet handkerchiefs to counter the police attack.
Injured with tear gas shells the angry students stormed the cops
with bricks and shoes. A tear shell hit Gaziul Huq and he was taken
to the girls’ common room unconscious.
The fight with
the police continued till 2 pm in the Arts faculty area. The whole
university campus turned into a battle ground. On one side the
police attacked the students with batons and tear gas. The students
countered them with bricks and stones. Cornered by the brutally
aggressive police forces, the students broke the wall between arts
faculty and the medical college. Thus the fight then spread to the
medical and engineering college areas. A large number of students
were injured by police baton and tear gas charge.
Thursday, 21 February 1952,3
pm: The alphabet bleeds
The fight between the students and the
police forces went on and on. But the situation reached its darkest
phase when, around 3 pm, a group of armed police, instructed by
district magistrate Koreshi, sprang out from behind the shop
opposite to Dhaka Medical College hostel and took position in the
hostel ground and opened fire. Some bodies fell on the streets,
streaming blood dyed the roads with crimson hue. Some precious young
lives turned into Bangla alphabet. In the tear gas afflicted murky
ground of Dhaka University the fight between the cops and students
went on unaware of the great sacrifice of human lives, first in
human history, for the defense of the mother tongue.
Despite brutal firing and tear gas
attack, the police could not occupy the medical college hostel. The
students kept them at bay by throwing bricks. Soon the news of
police shooting the students spread like thunderbolt. Life in Dhaka
turned into a standstill. Thousands of people streamed into the
Dhaka medical hospital to pay their tribute to the martyrs. Shocked
and grief-struck their face turned stone, amber in their hearts.
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The bodies of the dead and the injured
were taken to the Dhaka medical hospital. Doctors and nurses rushed
into the emergency department to save their lives. One of the bodies
was unidentifiable because the head was blown away. Later it was
identified as martyr Barkat’s dead body. Mourning became the East
Bangla.
Later that evening the dead bodies
were taken to the morgue. As the police snatched few unidentified
dead bodies from the teargas afflicted public earlier that
afternoon, the students, fearing that the police might try to do it
again, guarded the morgue gate. But in the dead of the night, a
group of armed commando troops, escorted by the police, stormed the
morgue gate and forcibly took the dead bodies at the gun point. But
a few die-hard students followed the military jeeps on foot and
watched them dumping the dead bodies in the nearby Ajimpur cemetery.
As soon as the army left the cemetery, the students came out of
their hidings and marked the spots where the martyrs were dumped.
The following morning thousands of people went to the cemetery and
paid their tributes to the martyrs of Bangla language movement.
The Bangla language movement was
essentially conceived and led by the Bangalee students. Since this
movement onwards, students’ role in the national politics has been
central. Unlike the political parties, the students’ movement always
won the indiscriminate sympathy and support of the masses. In the
language movement the roles of the politicians were insignificant
(many top political leaders including Sheikh Mujib were imprisoned
before the movement). They could not direct the students’ emotions
and passions for nationalist political achievements. The Bangalee
intelligentsia (the secular and liberal intellectuals, most of them
were black listed by the Pakistani authority and brutally murdered
by the collaborators of Pakistan army, the Razakars, Al-Badard and
other militant Islamic fundamentalists just a week before the
independence. Please visit Liberation War, Martyr Intelligentsia,
Razakars and War Criminals pages for details) had a great
contribution in this movement. Conservative parties like Muslim
League, Jamat and other Islamic parties always opposed, and even
tried to crash, the nationalistic movements. After independence, all
the major political parties, whether democratic or military, tried
to politicize the Bangla language day. The traditional morning
rallies to the language monument are often disrupted by the fight
between the opposing political parties to place the photos of their
party leaders on the top of the monument. Islamic parties always
opposed the Bangla Language Day and tried to persuade the Muslims
from rallying and offering flowers to the Shaheed Minar (Martyrs’
Monument) by interpreting it as idol worship. Even in some areas
where the Jamatis dominate, they attempted to destroy the monuments.
Despite all the mean politics about the language movement and its
legacy, Ekushay February will forever inspire the Bangalees to
defend and love their sweet mother tongue- Bangla.
LANGUAGE AND IMPERIALISM
Grammar (language) has always been the
consort of the empire, and forever shall remain its mate. It is a
tool a tool for the state control over the shape of people’s
everyday subsistence. It is a toll for conquest abroad and as a
weapon to suppress untutored speech at home. (For Queen Isabella his
Grammar would be, he argued in his petition for support of
publication) a tool to colonize the language spoken by her subjects.
Nebrija: Grammatica Castellana (1492)
I was greatly delighted with my new
companion, and made it my business to teach him everything that was
proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to
make him speak, and understand me when I spake, and he was the
aptest scholar that ever was.
(Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe)
It is impossible for us with our
limited means to attempt to educate the Body of the people. We must
at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters
between us and the millions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian
in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals
and in intellect.
(Macaulay’s Minute of 2nd
February 1835; Macaulay, 1835 pp.249)
I am very much interested in the
question of Basic English. The widespread use of this would be a
gain to us far more durable and fruitful than the annexation of
great provinces. It would also fit in with my ideas of closer union
with the United States by making it even more worth while to belong
to the English speaking club.
(Winston Churchill, 1943)
Ideological World War III has started
and there is no certainty that it is well won yet. In spite of the
fact that this is a war for men’s minds, there exist no Joint Chiefs
of Staff planning such a war, no war production authority concerning
itself with material for such a war. These questions are by and
large, in our society, left to the private initiative of the type
that one sees in the Georgetown Institute of Language and
Linguistics.
In this war for men’s minds, obviously
the big guns of our armament is competence in languages and
linguistics.
(Mortimer Graves, Executive
Secretary of the American Council of Learned Society, 1950, quoted
in Newmeyer, 1986, p-56)
There is a hidden sales element in
every English teacher, book, magazine, film strip and television
programme sent overseas.
(British Council Annual Report,
1968-69 pp. 10-11)
English is, moreover, an export which
is very likely to attract other exports-British advisers and
technicians, British technological or university education, British
plant and equipment and British capital investment. There are clear
commercial advantages to be gained from increasing number of
potential customers who can read technical and trade publicity
material written in English.
(British
Ministry of Education, 1956, para.10)
Second language programs can be viewed
within this marketing framework. It is clear that we are suppliers
of a product (or service) which consumers need and avail themselves
of. Students are consumers who pay for our product directly (from
their own pocket) or indirectly (through subsidies given to them or
us). We are like ‘corporations’ which on the basis of certain
management decisions produce a service which we hope will be
purchased by many and which will please all buyers. We advertise the
products (some of us more, others less), we hire personnel to
deliver the project (teachers), and we build and administer the
locations where the product changes hands (schools and classrooms).
(Yorio, 1986 p. 670)
Post-colonial responses to
LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM
Let us be clear that English language
has been a monumental force and institution of oppression and rabid
exploitation throughout 400 years of imperialist history. It
attacked the black person who spoke it with its racist images and
imperialist message; it battered the worker who toiled as its words
expressed the parameters of his misery and the subjection of entire
peoples in all the continents of the world. It was made to scorn the
languages it sought to replace, and told the colonized peoples that
mimicry of its primacy among languages was a necessary badge of
their social mobility as well as their continued humiliation and
subjection. Thus, when we talk of ‘mastery’ of the Standard
language, we must be conscious of the terrible irony of the word,
that the English language itself was the language of the master, the
carrier of his arrogance and brutality. Yet, as teachers, we seek to
grasp that same language and give it a new content, to de-colonize
its words, to de-myself its meaning, and as workers taking over our
own factory and giving our machines new lives, making it a vehicle
for liberation, consciousness and love, to rip out its class
assumptions, its racism and appalling degradation of women, to make
it truly common, to recreate it as a weapon for the freedom and
understanding of our people.
Searle
English education was carefully
rationed and conferred as a privilege to a selected few and it
created a distinct social difference in all the former British
colonies: India, Malaysia and Singapore. Promotion of certain forms
of education and culture were inextricably bound up with colonial
rule. In social and cultural realms English vs. vernacular education
was an extension of the divide and rule and was sustained as an
effective colonial policy to increase class and ethnic divisions in
the country.
(In the Philippines) the American
regime was committed to making a showcase democracy, and school,
English, and a literate citizenry were central to this goal.
Foley (1984)
English as a
Second language (ESL) is an imported new empire.
Mukherjee
In ESL the puerile structure of
content was not and is not about transmission of skills or critical
understanding of concepts. It is geared to receiving situational
instructions and learning how to assimilate as an ‘object’ into a
structural order into a value order, into a cultural order, into a
linguistic order, and above all, into a racist order.
Mukherjee
The Indians, West Indians, Pacific
Islanders, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Maltese, Africans and Sri
Lankans (Ceylonese then) discovered that they had learnt the same
nursery rhymes, studied virtually the same selection of poems, the
same plays and novels; read the same grammars, the same language
series (Ballard’s Junior and Senior Fundamental English); consulted
the same collection of model essays; debated the same topics; had
the same selection of History, Geography and Hygene texts; had gone
through the same rituals on Empire Day-come sunshine or rain-and, in
many instances, knew ‘God save the Queen’ better than their recently
adopted National Anthem.
(Thumboo,
1988)
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