The Bengali Language Movement

INTRODUCTION: The Bengali Language Movement, also known as the Language Movement, was a political effort in Bangladesh, advocating the recognition of the Bengali Language as an official language of Pakistan. Such recognition would allow Bengali to be taught in schools and used in government affairs.

When the state of Pakistan was formed in 1947, its two regions, East Pakistan and West Pakistan, were split along cultural, geographical, and linguistic lines, in 1948, the Government of Pakistan ordained Urdu as the sole national language, sparking extensive protests among the Bengali-speaking majority of East Pakistan. Facing rising sectarian tensions and mass discontent with the new law, the government outlawed public meetings and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka and other political activists defied the law and organized a protest on 21February 1952. The movement reached its climax when police killed student demonstrators on that day. The deaths provoked widespread civil unrest led by the Awami Muslim League, later renamed the Awami League. After years of conflict, the central government relented and granted official state to the Bengali language in 1956. In 2000UNESCO declared 21 February International Mother Language Day for the whole world to celebrate, in tribute to the Language Movement and the ethno-linguistic rights of people around the world.

The Language Movement catalyzed the assertion of Bengali national identity in Pakistan, and became a forerunner tot Bengali nationalist movements, including the 6-point movement and subsequently the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. In Bangladesh, 21 February is observed as Language Movement Day, a national holiday. The Shaheed Miner monument was constructed near Dhaka Medical College in memory of the movement and its victims.

Background:

The present nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh were part of undivided India during the British colonial rule. from the mid-19th century, the Urdu language had been promoted as the lingua franca of Indian Muslims by political and religious leaders such as Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan,Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq. urdu is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. it developed under Persian, Arabic and Turkic influence on apabhramshas (last linguistic stage of the medieval Indian Aryan language Pali-Prakrit) in South Asia during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire. with its Perso-Arabic script, the language was considered a vital element of the Islamic culture for Indian Muslims; Hindi and the Devanagari script were seen as fundamentals of Hindu culture.

while the use of Urdu grew common with Muslims in northern India, the Muslims of Bengal(a province in the eastern part of British India) primarily used the Bengali language. Bengali is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language that arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages around 1000CE and developed considerably during the Bengal Renaissance. as early as the late 19th century, social activists such as the Muslim feminist Roquia Sakhawat Hussain were choosing to write in Bengali to reach out to the people and develop it as a modern literary language. Supporters of Bengali opposed Urdu even before te partition of India, when delegates from Bengal rejected the idea of maiking Urdu the lingua franca of Muslim India in the 1937 Lucknow session  of the Muslim League. the Muslim League was British Indian political party that became the driving force behind the creation of Pakistan asia Muslim state separate from British India.

Early Stages of the movement: 

After the partition of india in 1947, nonspeaking peoples in East Pakistan made up 44 million of the newly-formed Pakistan's 69 million people. Pakistan's government, civil services, and military, however were dominated by West Pakistanis. in 1947, a key resolution at a national education summit in Karachi advocated Urdu as the sole state language, and its exclusive use in the media and in schools. opposition and protests immediately arose. students from Dhaka rallied under the leadership of Abul Kashem, the secretary of Tamaddun Majlish, a Bengali Islamic cultural organisattion. The meeting stipulated Bengali as an official language of Pakistan and as a medium of education in East Pakistan. however, the Pakistan Public Service Commisssion removed Bengali from the list of approved subjects, as well as from currency notes and stamps. the central education minister Fazlur Rahman made extensive preparations to make Urdu the only state language of Pakistan. public outrage spread, and a large number of Bengali sttudents met on the University of Dhaka campus on 8 December 1947 to formally demand that Bengali be made an official language. to promote thir cause, Bengali students organised processions and rallies in Dhaka.

leading Bengali scholars argued why only Urdu should not be the state language. the linguist Muhammad Shahidullah pointed out that Urdu was not the native language of any part of Pakistan, and said, 'if we have to choose a second state language, we should consider Urdu.' the writer Abul Mansur Ahmed said if Urdu became the state language, the educated society of East Pakistan would become 'illiterate' and 'ineligible' for government positions. the first Rastrabhasa Sangram Parishad(National Language Action Comittee), an organization in favor of Bengali as a state language was formed towards the end of December 1947. Professor Nurul Huq Bhuiyan of the Tamaddun Majlish convened the committee. later, Parliament member Shamsul Haq convened a new committee to push for Bengali as a state language. assembly member Dhirendranath Datta proposed legislation in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan to allow members to speak in Bengali and authorize its use for official purposes. Datta's proposal was supported by legislators Prem Hari Burman, Bhupendra Kumar Datta and Sris Chandra Chattaopadhyaya of East Bengal, as well as the people from the region. Prime minister Liaquat ali Khan and the Muslim League denounced the proposal as an attempt to divide the Pakistani people, thus the legislation  was defeated.

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