All state affairs must be conducted in mother tongue

I think that sometimes the enemy acts as a friend while committing enmity. The attitude towards the enemy softens when the enemy refrains from committing enmity or shows some generosity. Such a position of the enemy is not only confusing, but also harmful. Only an intelligent enemy has the capacity to create such confusion in the mind.

However, the good news is that even an intelligent enemy sometimes has mental illusions. The enemy who falls victim to such mental illusions becomes a greater ally than a friend. In this way, the great enemies of Bengalis and the founder of Pakistan, the two extremely cunning and very intelligent 'quaids' — Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Quaid-e-Millat Liaquat Ali Khan — became the ultimate friends of the Bengali nation.

Jinnah, the main proponent of the two-nation theory, paved the way for the Bengali nation to be free from the delusion of that false theory. He did that just six months after the creation of Pakistan. In March 1948, he did a great service to the Bengali nation by unequivocally stating that ‘Urdu alone will be the state language of Pakistan’. If he had not made such a remark at that time, it would have taken much longer for the Bengalis to recognise themselves as Bengalis. The minds of the Bengalis might have remained tied to the pillars of the two-nation theory for a long time. “We are Muslims and Pakistan is a country of Muslims. We are not Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis, Pathans, or Bengalis, we are Pakistanis” — the Bengali nation might have remained stuck in such a state of thought for a long time. Yet, how can we forget that the person whose foul language immediately made Bengalis protest actually freed them from the addiction of the drug called Pakistan? How can we forget the great favour he did us that day?

Liaquat Ali Khan also did such a favour to the Bengali nation. He did it shortly before Jinnah's speech was delivered - on February 23. Dhirendranath Dutt, a Bengali member of the parliament, placed a proposal at the parliament to use Bengali for official purposes by amending the provision that ‘members of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan must speak either in Urdu or in English’. In response, losing temper Liaquat Ali furiously said, “Pakistan is a Muslim state. Therefore, the language of Pakistan should be the language of a Muslim state. At first, I thought the purpose of the amendment proposal was innocent. The proposal expressed the desire to include Bengali as a language of the parliament. But now it seems that the purpose of the proposal is to create discord among the people of Pakistan, to separate Muslims from the efforts to establish unity through a common language.”

On that day, many members of the Constituent Assembly, including Khwaja Nazimuddin, a son of soil of Bengal but an enemy of the Bengalis, joined hands with the 'Quaid-e-Millat'.

What the 'Quaid-e-Azam' said when he came to Dhaka a few days later was even more outrageous. According to the 'Azad' newspaper of that time, Jinnah said, “Those who in the past betrayed the Muslims or betrayed Pakistan or voted against Pakistan, have today become the saviors of your rights and are inciting you to disobey the government on the language issue. Yet this Pakistan is the foundation of your right to self-determination. I am warning you about this fifth column.”

The manner and language in which those two 'quaids' of Pakistan were speaking had lost its acceptability to the people of East Bengal at that time. However, those two 'quaids' wanted to convince the Bengali nation with that unacceptable manner and language. This had the opposite effect. It would not be incorrect if I say that from that day onwards, the anti-two-nation mentality started evolving in the mind of the Bengali nation. The Bengali nation, through the struggle to establish the right to mother tongue, liberated its motherland from the hands of rogue state of Pakistan and also began the establishment of an independent nation-state from that day onwards.

However, it must be admitted that the entire nation had not yet awakened to a common consciousness. Especially as long as Jinnah and Liaquat were alive. Jinnah and Liaquat's anti-Bengali statements immediately awakened the minds of conscious and educated Bengalis. Although the awakened Bengali intellectuals rejected the statements of those two leaders and became disillusioned with their leadership, the thoughts of the majority of Bengalis could not progress that far, and not all Bengalis were disillusioned enough to reject the leadership of Jinnah and Liaquat.

Jinnah died in 1948 and Liaquat Ali was assassinated in 1950. A year and a half after Liaquat Ali's death, that bloody February of 1952 came. Moving forward with the spirit of that February, the Bengalis joined the world-shaking war of 1971 and broke the cage of Pakistan, establishing an independent 'People's Republic of Bangladesh'.

Now let me tell you about myself. In 1948, I was studying in the sixth grade at Chandranath High School in Netrokona. There was no college in Netrokona at that time. There were only four high schools. Suddenly one day - probably in March - students of grades nine and ten entered our classroom without the permission of the sir, just saying, “May we come in, sir?”

Entering the classroom, they started saying, “A conspiracy is being hatched against our mother tongue, Bengali. The so-called Father of the Nation of Pakistan, Jinnah, came to Dhaka and said, ‘Urdu is the state language of Pakistan’. Everyone opposed it, we will not accept it at all. Our mother tongue is Bengali, and that mother tongue should be the state language. There were some police atrocities, and we will take to the streets to protest against it.”

We then came out with them. Bringing out a procession, we paraded on the streets of Netrokona town, chanting various slogans including 'we want Bangla as the state language’, ‘we do not accept Jinnah Saheb's statement’, and ‘stop police atrocities'.

The next morning, I attended a meeting at the Muktangan field in Netrakona town. I was a class six student at the time, and I had no role to play. There was no college in Netrakona at that time, and students of classes nine and ten gave various speeches explaining that although Jinnah Sahib was the father of the nation of Pakistan, he had attacked our language today by making Urdu the state language.

In their speech, the students on that day said, “We will never accept this. Even if Jinnah Sahib himself said it, we cannot accept it.”

At that time, no one could speak against Jinnah Sahib's words in Pakistan - no one could have imagined such a thing before 1948. In any case, that day, the thought that I was able to be involved in the language movement was a matter of pride for me. Then I had to leave Netrakona town, or it can be said, I was forced to leave for various reasons.

And now, at my old age, I want to say that a person can change his religion, but not his language. After a man is born, his language becomes his identity. We consider our motherland as equal to our mother. The land in which I was born is my mother. And the language through which I became a human being, I express my thoughts and consciousness is my mother tongue.

Just as we respect our mother who gave birth to us, we also have to respect our mother tongue and motherland; but in reality, there are many reasons behind not having respect for our mother tongue. It is worthy of mention that the upper-class people of our country avoid the traditions of the country, cherishing the traditions of foreign countries. They forget the culture of the country by establishing relations with foreign countries.

Even today, various conspiratorial reactionary groups seem to be active in this country. They are still engaged in anti-Bengali activities. Another class of unconscious people find satisfaction in sending their children to English medium schools. They do not think that the whole of Bengal once joined the movement for the language, our brothers gave their lives. Even the working people like the farmers in the villages were not left behind in that movement. They also joined our procession.

My question to the conscience of those who are fond of the English medium is how much will your child's life improve with education in English? What will a person do who does not know his own language? How much will a person who does not know his own culture love you? How can a person who does not know the great people of his language develop himself? I am not against other languages at all. But one must respect one's own language, one must know the whole culture.

I want to tell the country’s young generation that we have to write/publish everything in our mother tongue. This will not happen automatically. For this, I would say, we have to create a movement - a movement against those who do not use our mother tongue. We have to make all kinds of efforts to establish our mother tongue — from education to entertainment, from markets to roads — we have to motivate everyone to practice this everywhere. Through such a movement, we have to return to the practice of our mother tongue.

Jatin Sarkar: Essayist and Educationist