"As a boy, I used to see his photo as a member of Pakistan national guard, which inspired me to join the army," recalled freedom fighter Nurul Islam Badal, the only son of Abdul Jabbar, one of the martyrs of the 1952 Language Movement.

Jabbar made the supreme sacrifice for the mother tongue on February 21, 1952 when police opened fire on a procession in Dhaka demanding Bangla as the state language.

However, Badal thinks the Language Movement martyrs including his father are not duly honoured when the nation observes the Shaheed Dibash or the International Mother Language Day on the 21st of February every year.

"At least the government could have arranged a reception to the families of the martyrs on the eve of Shaheed Dibash," Badal said.

He said the martyrs of the 1971 Liberation War are remembered at the state level but the language martyrs are ignored, although it is the Language Movement that initiated the struggle for independence that eventually gave birth to the nation.

The son of the language martyr recalled all the hardships he confronted being fatherless at an early age. He said that due to financial constraints he could not continue his studies after the higher secondary level.

Each of the language martyrs' families was granted an annual allowance of Tk 2,000 by the Juktofront government back in 1954. But the family of Jabbar received the allowance only for two years, 1958 and 1959, due to bureaucratic tangles.

However, the Ayub Khan government cancelled the allowance a couple of years later.

When the Liberation War began in 1971, Badal joined the war and fought in sector-11. The family of Jabbar was in serious economic hardship during the nine-month war and their struggle continued after the war.

"Even I fell in an identity crisis when I read in newspaper that an unknown elderly woman was donated a house as the mother of martyr Jabbar," Badal said. Some influential people in 1973 recognised the old lady as Jabbar's mother Safatunnesa.

The then government sanctioned a house at Tejkunipara in Dhaka for the woman. "I had to struggle for long to have the ownership of the house and finally we moved to that house in 1978 after an investigation was done," Badal said.

It was a 21 feet by 12 feet single-room house. After retiring from the army, Badal built another room at the house in 2001. He lives there with his wife and daughter.

Badal does not want any financial help being the son of a language martyr. He just wants that language martyrs are duly honoured. "The language martyrs are above politics and they deserve acknowledgements for their sacrifice."

"I feel sad to think that the Ekushey Padak was introduced long ago, but the language martyrs received it in the year 2000," Badal said.