Opinion

Why Not 'Bangla' Then?

Abritty Abdullah
Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

The countries which have flourished tremendously around the globe have certainly shown extreme respect towards their own cultures and languages. In China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia most of the people with higher educational background do not bother to learn English because their infrastructure is strong enough to thrive with only their own language. Where in Bangladesh, which has a glorious history like no other country in the world has based their sacrifice on our mother tongue; Bangla is on the verge of losing its glory among the youth. Most of our youth cannot tell what happened politically during the 1950's. In Bangla medium educational system, history changes every five years and the English medium educational system, is too busy to discuss what happened during Henry VIII's reign. History is what we are, where we are from and language is our identity. History shows that the great empires, which had failed to respect their identity has failed to restrain their power. Being westernised, following their music, movies and culture everything is considerable to some extent where positivity and globalisation reflects, but ignoring our own mother tongue and not knowing the history will take us down in front of the world. Bangla is important because it runs in our blood; it defines our identity and makes us strong to face the world with courage that our language movement has given us. Mixing Bangla with English and speaking it aloud is considered a trend here in our country now. Why not pure Bangla? Is Bangla, by any means, inferior to English? Why not practise proper Bangla among us Bangalis rather than the informal way we talk? Why should we bully a person who is not good in English when he/she is extremely good in Bangla? The age old clash between Bangla medium and English medium students seems pointless. English is needed for us because we live in a globalised world and Bangla is our identity and no one can ever deny the importance of it. Only the public universities, along with hardly two or three private universities, provide Bangla as a Major for Bachelors and higher degrees. There should be a course on Bangla in every single undergraduate syllabus mandatory to educate the pupils about their own culture. To establish our language globally, Bangla should be considered to be as important as the other subjects in universities. We have drifted far away from Bangla and failed to give the respect is deserves. We should be proud to have a beautiful language like Bangla and remember that we are actually made by Bangla and I hope Bangla will soon get the love it deserves as our language martyrs gave it. I hope Bangla will be spoken, read and show cased perfectly among us Bangalis and moreover, throughout the world.