The Language Martyrs

The Language Martyrs

On 21^st February, 1952, Pakistani soldiers fired at a peaceful procession around Dhaka University, called to protest Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s decree, reiterated by the new governor-general, Khawaja Nazimuddin, that Urdu – and only Urdu – would be the national language of Pakistan, East and West. Five protesters, most of them students, were shot dead and at another rally the next day to mourn the murdered martyrs, others died, including a nine-year-old boy, called Ohiullah. Unrest continued for many days after that but, from these tragic killings, the spark of resistance to West Pakistani rule over its partner in the East was ignited. As every reader knows all too well, it was the Bengalis’ love for their language which fanned this spark into an inferno that would lead to the War of Liberation and the creation of our Bangladesh, albeit at the cost of so many millions of lives.

But why did Jinnah insist that just one language – and that spoken by a small minority of people even in West Pakistan – should be the official lingua franca of a country with so many others? After all, in Pakistan even today there are: Pashto, Balochi, Punjabi, Kasmiri and Sindhi, among many others. In 2020, there are only 66 million first language Urdu speakers, with another hundred million people using it as a second language. Urdu is only the 21^st most widely spoken in the world, while Bangla is the fifth, with as many as 230 million native speakers. Jinnah’s answer might be that a common language unifies a people and cements the bonds that tie them together.

To Bengalis though, the decree that Urdu should be the only official language of Pakistan reeked of racial superiority, suggesting that Bangla was of inferior status (although spoken by more people in the newly founded nation in 1947). Of course, if Urdu were to remain the only language of government, East Pakistanis would be disadvantaged, as they would not be able to serve in the Army, work in the Civil Service or even, perhaps, act as representatives of their own people in Parliament. The arrogance of the West Pakistani rulers in dictating which language could be taught in schools and universities, would appear on postage stamps, would be needed to file complaints at a police station or apply for government assistance was a sure sign of the contempt with which the dreams and aspirations of East Pakistanis would be treated in future.

Since 1955, Bangladesh has celebrated Language Movement Day and, in 2000, the United Nations declared that 21^st February would be designated International Mother Language Day all over the world. Yet, despite these worthy tributes to the young men and poor Ohiullah killed in 1952, we should surely ask whether we are doing enough in this country to show our children the importance of the ultimate sacrifice made by the Language Martyrs. It is part of the historical record that, in 1956, the Pakistani Government finally caved in and recognized Bangla as an official language alongside Urdu. Yet, do our youngsters now take it for granted or, even worse, treat 21^st February as just another day off school when the TV shows nothing but documentaries on the martyrs,… the same old ones as last year and the one before that, of course. 

Every year, schools bring out processions to mark the day. There is always the inevitable painting competition, when the younger students are asked to portray the monument set up in memory of the martyrs, Shaheed Minar, most likely against a blood red sun. Our kids lay flowers on makeshift representations of the monument in school playgrounds all over the nation. But what do they really know about Abdus Salam, Rafiq Uddin Ahmed, Sofiur Rahman,  Abul Barkat and Abdul Jabbar? What do they know of their sacrifice? Do they understand why these brave young men thought it so important to defy a government and armed soldiers just so that Bangla would be a state language? If they cannot empathise with the grief of the fallen men’s parents, their brothers and sisters, their friends – perhaps even girlfriends – how can they feel the lads’ sacrifice? How can 21^st February belong to them?

If the events of 1952 seem dim and distant history to our children today, the fault, of course, lies with us. We do not honour the dead by thinking creatively about how we can make their sacrifice come to life for our youngsters. Year after year, we go through the motions. We do not even vary the day’s events for those who have submitted exactly the same entries to the previous year’s painting competition. We do not research the lives of the murdered students and so they remain names on a page, rather than real people who cried and laughed, moaned and exulted. It is similar to our reaction to an item on the news on TV: another car bomb in Kabul, a suicide vest set off in Baghdad – all so far away from us here in Bangladesh, all so repetitive, we think as we watch the film footage of corpses littering a now deserted market and take another bite of the sandwich we are eating. Is 21^st February becoming the same phenomenon, an event that means so little to our young apart from a chance to dress up in black and white? Unless our kids know the martyrs, learn about their hobbies, their aims, their families and everyday lives, then Abdus Salam, Sofiur, Rafiq, Abul Barkat and Abdul Jabbar will be lost to us forever, as our Freedom Fighters join the departed and cannot pass their message on. It is time our schools and government departments paid more than lip service to their memories.

However, to understand why Bangla was so important for the lads that died in 1952 – indeed, also for the hundreds of people injured in that deadly month of February – we should look into the role that language plays in our learning and in our attempts to understand each other at home and abroad. Human beings start learning just as soon as they are born and continue until death. Language is one of the main ways in which we do this, of course, and is what differentiates us from animals. Its importance is attested by the fact that doting parents are overjoyed by a child’s first utterance: “What was her first word?”; “Did she say ‘Ma’?”; and so on.

There are, in fact, some 6,000 to 7,000 languages spoken in the world today (although not all of these, by any means, are written).  Estimates suggest that 90% of them will be extinct by 2050. Half of them have fewer than 10,000 speakers today and, each year, we can read articles about the last remaining speaker of such and such a language dying. But what happens when the last speaker of a language passes away? Surely, we lose something from the world. Language and culture are not just linked: they are two sides of the same coin. Think about words in Bangla that simply cannot be translated into English because some of their meaning gets lost. How often do we hear people say that translations of Tagore cannot really communicate the great man’s meaning as well as Bangla does? If the words are no longer there when a language dies, can the experience, the feeling, the phenomenon survive? Do we lose a way of thinking, an idea, a part of who we are?

Academics have argued that, for a language to survive, it must be used in schools; there has to be some financial or professional motivation; and it needs to be available as an electronic language. Sadly, there are fewer than a hundred languages that are currently available on the Internet. And, of course, a language must be written. But this will never be the case when the last surviving speakers of a language are old and there is no financial motivation for youngsters to learn their dying tongue.

We can see the beginnings of this line of thought in some English medium schools which relegate Bangla to a second class subject in their curricula. Please do not get me wrong: I do not wish to accuse all these schools of the same shortsightedness. Many are, of course, doing a fine job of keeping our children and grandchildren closely connected to their language and their cultural roots. Cambridge Assessments added ‘Bangladesh Studies’ as an ‘O’ level subject to their academic menu nearly twenty years ago in a bid to encourage children and schools to appreciate the diversity and wealth of their unique history and heritage.

Yet, there are far too many that do not attach the necessary importance to Bangla, the history of the region and the sacrifice that so many people made – not just generals and politicians – but common people, farm labourers, school students, university professors and shopkeepers, to make Bangladesh a reality. Like school event organizers across the country that treat 21^st February as just another day in the academic calendar, these schools have a limited and damaging vision of what real education is. They see it only in terms of grades, percentages and memorized answers to examination questions, forgetting that what we learn at school can shape our interests in our adult lives outside our careers. It will also, of course, determine how we educate our own children.

It is a sad but undeniable fact that many of the Bangladeshi diaspora in Europe, Australia and North America lament that their children, often uprooted from Bangladesh in their early childhood or, maybe, born overseas, cannot read their parents’ language, communicate fluently with their grandparents or appreciate the folk music of Abbasuddin Ahmed. However, isn’t that also the case for many children living and studying in this country today? How often do we hear them sigh over the complexities of Bangla, rather than glorying in them? When do they read Moinul Ahsan Saber, Harishankar Jaladas or Hasan Azizul Haque, among so many others, and so get in touch with their roots and learn to value the experience of those living very different lives here? Can they read these authors? And, if not, how are we to pass on a sense of the dignity and worth of this country’s cultural heritage?  

Globally, only 60% of the world’s young have access to a formal education system in a language they speak at home.  This means they will have to depend on some other tongue to pursue their education, which limits understanding and, of course, their sense of belonging. In Bangladesh, Bangla is taught everywhere, but parents and students seem sometimes not to value it. It has given way to Maths, Chemistry and Physics or Business Studies and accounting as essential learning.

But this is a huge mistake! And not only in terms of cultural heritage, but in relation to professional careers too. It is well-known that a strong foundation in their mother tongue equips children with the skills they need to learn additional languages, allowing them to transfer their understanding of syntactical structure in the mother tongue to the study of new ones. The intuitive understanding of grammar that develops when children learn their first language can easily be passed on to others. With multilingualism becoming an increasingly sought-after attribute within the workplace, this advantage cannot be overstated; globalisation and increased co-operation between nations mean that, in many organisations, it has become a requirement to be able to communicate comfortably in several languages, in addition to being a specialist within a particular field.

The mother tongue also plays a huge role in the development of personal, social and cultural identity. Children with a rock solid basis in their first language often display a deeper understanding of themselves and their place within society, along with an increased sense of well-being and confidence. Naturally, this flows down into every aspect of their lives, including academic and professional achievement.

So, on that day of sadness and mourning every February, let us celebrate the lives and deaths of our Language Martyrs by making an effort to get to know them again. Let us encourage our children and grandchildren, our students, to read our own authors and learn about what makes us different not just from West Pakistanis but any other people across the world, what makes us Bangladeshis. By doing so, we will also learn about what binds us to others, regardless of their mother tongues. That is how we should honour our glorious dead!

If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.

Videos :

1. 21st February 1952(3:47)

2. Brief history of International Mother Language Day(8:00)

3. Celebration of the day(10:28)

4. Shaheed Minar/martyr monument(1:37)

5. Brief introduction to martyrs(1:38)

6. Do young Bangladeshi understand the true value of martyrs’ sacrifice?(4:41)

7. Bengali alphabets(2:39)

8. Is Bangla ignored in English medium schools in Bangladesh?(2:19)

9. Bangla among the most widely spoken languages in the world(9:07)