Bangla language, sense of identiy and the birth of Bangladesh

Md. Anwarul Kabir

Each year Pahela Baishakh stimulates us with the sense of our own identity and nationhood. This day renews our realization , 'We are Bangalis, Bangla is our language and we belong to deltaic land Bangladesh.' It also reminds us the legacy of Bangali culture which we inherit is secular in nature opposing the religious bigotry.

The formation of nation-state, its historical and cultural heritage constitute inspiring factors in the national identity construction. Bangladesh is a linguistic-based nation state. Language identity is largely a political matter and languages are flags of allegiance. A probe into the history confirms that the formation of Bangali nationhood and the nation state Bangladesh is closely related to Bangla language. The language controversy was initiated even before the partition of India in 1948. Dr. Zia Uddin Ahmed, the then Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh University advocated that Urdu should be the state language of the proposed religion-based Pakistan. Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah, renowned linguistic, strongly opposed this proposition and reasoned in favour of Bangla as the future state language of Pakistan. His sharp reaction of the issue was, “To surrender Bengali to Urdu or Hindi as the language of the court and the university will be a shameful surrender of Bengal.” Besides, Dr. Shahidullah discarded the communal notion of some Muslim League Leaders of that time towards the language Bangla and Bengali community and argued, “ It is true that there are Hindus and Muslims. This is a reality. Nature with her own hand has stamped the indelible mark of Bengali in such a manner on our appearance and language that it is no longer possible to conceal it.” In essence he metaphorically pointed out the unique ethnic and cultural identity of the Bangla-speaking people. Tamaddun Majlis, a platform of Bangali intelligentsia of that time also raised the question on the issue of 'state language' of the proposed religion based nation state Pakistan. A well articulated pamphlet of Tamaddun Majlis published on September 15, 1947 entitled “Pakistaner Rashtra Bhasha: Bangla na Urdu? (“Pakistan's state language: Bangla or Urdu?”) had played in the psyche of the Bangali educated class.

It may be mentioned that the philosophy behind the birth of Pakistan was that the religious identity (i.e. Muslim) would supersede other primordial identities (e.g. languages, cultural heritages) that would bind the people as a nation. However, ideally a state can mobilize and tie the people based on a primordial identity. But exception is there if we consider the case of India. In India, there are twenty two languages and many ethnic groups, yet India could succeed to instill the sense of being “Indian” into the psyche of the people of its geographic boundaries. For this, India follows an egalitarian approach to both political aspirations and economic grievances of the various ethno-linguistic groups. Unlike India, Pakistan utterly failed in this respect.

After the partition, Karachi (the then capital of Pakistan) centered non-Bengali Muslim league leaders captured the power centre of the newly formed country and started to deprive East Pakistan in everyway. After partition, Muslim owned banks were shifted from Bombay to Karachi . As the banking and financing were in the hands of West Pakistan, discrimination was very much distinct in East Pakistan. In many cases, Bengalis were also excluded from the civil service and other professional jobs.

Perhaps, the negation of the most popular demand of adopting Bangla as one of the state languages along with Urdu gave a serious blow in this respect. Especially, in 1948 Pakistan's founder father Muhammad Ali Zinnah's declaration favouring Urdu as a state language in a student convocation at Dhaka university ignited a spontaneous protest and subsequently, the growing language movement of Bangalis got its momentum in 1952. In fact, the language movement reshaped the Bangali nationalism in the boundary of eastern region under the framework of Pakistan. In the political front Awami League under the leadership of Bangabandhu, NAP under the leadership of Bhasani along with other progressive parties of East Pakistan played a pivotal role in the reformation of Bangali nationalism at that time.

One of the major driving forces of our War of Liberation was Bangali nationalism originating from Bangla language. During the period of liberation, all of us were united and fought against Pakistani occupying force as we upheld our inner feelings of our Bangali identity. This driving force led us to win the war within nine months. In essence, it can be argued that the birth of Bangladesh has rendered us a secular linguistic identity from the religion oriented Pakistani identity.

Although, the Bangalis in Bangladesh are the major torch bearers of Bangla language and Bangali cultural heritage, in broad sense, the Bangalis include the Bangalis in India as well as Bangali Diaspora worldwide. All of us feel affinity as we speak in the same language and share common cultural heritage.

Photos: Amirul Rajiv

Md. Anwarul Kabir is a university academic at AIUB.