February 21

 The controversy over language actually started before India was divided on the basis of biracial theory in 1947.

 At that time, the intellectuals expressed concern that if Urdu was imposed instead of the mother tongue, the next generation of Bengali speakers would become uneducated and the very existence of Bengali language would be jeopardized.  This is considered to be a big blow to the practice of mother tongue independently.

 The feeling of anger in the minds of Bengalis about these things has been building since then.  Towards the end of that year, 'Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad' was formed.

 In the state of Pakistan at that time, Bengali speakers were more majority than Urdu speakers.  Even then, on a visit to East Pakistan on March 21, 1948, Muhammad Ali Jinnah made it clear at a rally at the Racecourse Ground that 'Urdu would be the only state language of Pakistan'.

 Many present at the rally immediately protested.

 Jinnah has been adamant from the outset about establishing Urdu as the state language.

 "There can be no greater slavery than accepting a language other than the mother tongue as the state language."

 The feeling of anger in the minds of Bengalis about these things has been building since then.  Towards the end of that year, 'Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad' was formed.

 Despite being a resident of East Bengal, Khwaja Nazimuddin came to Dhaka on 26 January 1952 and repeated Jinnah's words at a rally in Paltan.  At that time also the slogan 'I want Bangla as the state language' was raised in strong protest.

  What happened on the 21st of February.

 It is said that the position and speech of Khwaja Nazimuddin, taken for political reasons, added a new dimension to the language movement.  His declaration aroused the feeling of deprivation in the minds of the Bengalis of East Pakistan.

 Rejecting Khwaja Nazimuddin's statement, spontaneous strikes and demonstrations started in East Pakistan from the next day.  So that the students of Dhaka University have played an important role.

 Led by Bhasani, the conference was attended by people from the political, cultural and professional communities of East Pakistan.  A general strike was declared on February 21.  Section 144 was issued in and around Dhaka University to prevent the strike.  Martyr's Day was born in violation of that.

 There is a lot of history behind the origin of Bengali language.  In fact, it is difficult to finish writing history.

 When Muhammad Ali Jinnah arrived in East Bengal for the first and last time in his life, in March 1948, seven months after the birth of Pakistan - he may not have thought that what he said there would one day lead to the disintegration of his established new country.

 Mr.  Jinnah was then the Governor General of Pakistan, the President of the Constituent Assembly and also the President of the Muslim League.

 During his nine-day visit to East Bengal, he addressed several meetings in Dhaka and Chittagong.  The first meeting in Dhaka was held on March 21, 1948, at the Racecourse Ground in Dhaka - now Suhrawardy Udyan.

 In it, he made it clear that the state language of Pakistan would be Urdu - not any other language.

 In his speech in English, he said, "I am telling you very clearly that the state language of Pakistan will be Urdu, and no other language. If anyone tries to confuse you, he is in fact the enemy of Pakistan."

 A few days later, Mr.  Jinnah gave another speech in front of the students at Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.  He said the same thing there.  He said that the provinces of Pakistan could use any language in their official functions - but the official language would be one and that would be Urdu.

  Students and intellectuals also staged a protest rally in Dhaka.

 Mr.  A group of Dhaka University students met Jinnah in the afternoon on the same day that he was speaking at Curzon Hall.  At this time the heated debate between them about the language almost reached the level of quarrel.

 Mr.  The group of students also gave a memorandum to Jinnah.  It demanded to make Bengali one of the state languages

 At that time some students and professors of Dhaka University formed an organization called Tamaddun Majlis in September 1948, which from the very beginning organized various meetings and discussions on the question of state language.

  At a meeting of the Working Committee of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League held at the Burdwan House (now the Bangla Academy building) on ​​5 December 1948 in Dhaka, it was proposed that Urdu should not be made the official language of East Bengal.

  As a result, only 6-7 months after the establishment of Pakistan.  When Jinnah came to Dhaka, the educated people of East Pakistan became anxious and angry over the question of state language.

  As soon as the talk of making Urdu the sole state language began, the students, educated middle class, intellectuals and politicians of East Bengal realized that it would be a catastrophe for the Bengalis.

 They understood that this would establish the dominance of Urdu speakers in Pakistan, leaving the Bengalis behind the Urdu-speaking population in terms of employment opportunities in the government and the military.  With the establishment of Pakistan, the dream of development and social development of Bengali Muslims was created - it will be utterly hampered.

 But the reality of Pakistan was that Bengali was the language of the majority of the people in the eastern part of the country - and in the country as a whole.  In West Pakistan, Punjabi was the language of just over 40 per cent of the population, and Urdu was the language of only four per cent.

 Even though Bengali is the language of the majority of the people, it will not be one of the state languages ​​of Pakistan - it caused great anger among the students and educated people of East Bengal.

 On the one hand, there is the passion for language and identity - but there is also an economic dimension. "

 Kazi Motahar Hossain in his article.

 He wrote, "... if an attempt is made to force Urdu on Bengali Hindus and Muslims as the state language, that attempt will fail. Because the smoked discontent cannot be suppressed for long.

 If Urdu is made the state language, the anger of the Bengalis of Pakistan will one day take the form of nationalist thinking and that is what the partition of Pakistan can bring - Dr.  Hossain felt it then.

  Mr.  Pakistani leaders, like Jinnah, may have had the same fears from their point of view.

 Mr.  In his speeches in Dhaka, Jinnah repeatedly said that those who demanded Bengali were suffering from a 'provincial' mentality, and that if Urdu was not the only state language, it would destroy Pakistan's 'unity and religious character'.

 He said that those who speak the state language Bengali are part of a conspiracy to destroy Pakistan.

 Excerpts from a speech delivered by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Dhaka are now available on the Internet.

  He thought that majority of the people of Pakistan were Urdu speaking.  Although Mr.  Jinnah himself was a Gujarati, he was very proficient in English, but did not know Urdu well.

 Why did Jinnah come up with the idea that everyone in Pakistan understands Urdu?

 "Mr Jinnah was originally associated with the Urdu-speaking Nawabs of East Bengal or the elite, but he did not know that the majority of the people outside him were actually Bengali-speaking and did not speak Urdu," says Professor Raunak Jahan.

 Mr.  Jinnah believed that Urdu was the only language that could carry the distinct identity of Pakistan as a Muslim state.

 In the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, the then Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan also said that Pakistan is a Muslim state - so Urdu needs to be predominant in maintaining the religious character of the language.

 If you look at the 21 points of 1954 - there was a strong connection between language and regional autonomy,

  Though religion was mentioned in the movement for the establishment of Pakistan, its main message was that if Muslims had a separate state their backwardness would be cut off, they would be freed from the domination of Hindu zamindars and moneylenders and opportunities for economic development would be opened.

 That is why the demand for Pakistan became popular among Bengali Muslims.  But even after the establishment of Pakistan, there was no possibility of fulfilling that aspiration.  And when the demand for state language was not met, anger and resentment easily arose among the Bengalis, "

 If..and the language movement of 1952 is a big event even though it started from 1947.  But there is no movement without middle class.

 Most of those who spoke of making Urdu the state language of Pakistan, including Muhammad Ali Jinnah, said that Urdu would be the 'only' state language of Pakistan.

 At this time an important event took place in Karachi.

 The first session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was held on February 25, 1947.  Dhirendranath Dutta, a member of the Congress party, proposed that in addition to Urdu and English, Bengali language should also be used in the activities of the Constituent Assembly.

 Mr.  Dutt's argument was that Bengali is the language of more than 40 million people out of 69 million people in Pakistan - that is, Bengali is the language of the majority of the people.  Therefore, Bengali should not be seen as a provincial language of Pakistan, Bengali should also be one of the state languages.

 But Mr.  Dutt's proposal for the amendment did not reach the Constituent Assembly.  Even the Bengali members of the Constituent Assembly could not support him due to the objections of the parliamentary party.

  Students in Dhaka boycotted classes and went on strike in protest.  'Language Day' was celebrated on 11th March 1947 in East Bengal.

 Badruddin Umar writes that on March 11 in Dhaka, there were protests in front of various government buildings for the Bengali language. The protesters forced two ministers to sign resignation letters.  The army had to be called to get Nazimuddin out of the Constituent Assembly building.

 Among the leaders arrested by the police were Shamsul Haque, Oli Ahad, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - who later became the leader of the 1971 Liberation War and the founding president of Bangladesh.

 A strike was also observed in Dhaka on March 13-15 to protest the arrest of these leaders.

 Two days later Khwaja Nazimuddin had a meeting with the students of Rashtrabhasha Sangram Parishad, in which it was agreed that his government would request the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan to make Bengali one of the state languages.

 Mr. came to Dhaka only after 10 days in such a turbulent environment.  Jinnah, and perhaps alluding to it, said in his speech that he was "creating confusion."

 Mr.  Even after Jinnah's death, various proposals, counter-proposals and debates on state language continued for several years.  .

 Until the beginning of 1959, a large section of Bengali politicians were strongly against the state language Urdu.  The movement was going on intermittently.

 Khwaja Nazimuddin has become the Union Prime Minister of Pakistan.  He gave a speech on January 26, 1952 - to revive the state language movement in Bengal.

 Despite being a resident of East Bengal, Khwaja Nazimuddin said in his speech that Urdu would be the state language of Pakistan and no state could move towards prosperity with two state languages.  He further said that the process of writing Bangla in Arabic script has already been started in 26 educational centers of East Bengal.

 As a result, student protests, strikes and strikes started anew.

  An all-party state language struggle council was formed.  The local administration issued section 144 in Dhaka from 21st February.  But the student leaders of Dhaka University decided that they would break section 144.

 Today's Dhaka Medical College was then the Kala Bhavan of Dhaka University.  On 21st February, protesters arrested the students after breaking Section 144, later threw tear gas.  In the afternoon, police opened fire when a group of protesting students tried to approach the Constituent Assembly building.

 Rafiq Uddin, Abdul Jabbar and Abul Barkat were martyred by the police on 21 February 1952 without any provocation.  Immediately after the police firing at 3 pm on February 21, the armed police team removed a few bodies lying on the side of the road in their van.  At that time eyewitnesses of that form were found in the street.  It was later learned that the number of injured would be at least 100.

 

 Disobeying this order on 21 February 1952, a large number of students of Dhaka University and some progressive political activists started a protest procession.  ... class students Barkat and Abdul Jabbar and many more.  Besides, 18 students and youths were injured.

  Barkat and Jabbar were students of Dhaka University.  Rafiq was the son of the owner of Badamtali Commercial Press.  The three of them were killed on February 21, 1952.

 The two most glorious events in the history of Bengal were the language movement of Bayanna and the liberation war of 1971.  We have won these two great movements with a lot of struggle and sacrifice.  Today is that great month of February.

 We will not forget you.  You will be immortal among us.

 (Moder Garb, Moder Asha, Aa Mori Bangla Bahasa!)