The politics of language

Let's imagine a situation where a cake would be cut on an occasion. The cake is small and not enough for the guests. I would feel good if most portion of the cake is served on me or my children, my relatives and people from my side. My opponent would feel the same if the lion's share of the cake goes to him. If each guest gets equal share, everyone would be happy. Popular Bangla proverb 'Chacha Apan Pran Bacha!' fits in this situation. In that case, the question will arise whether sharing the cake with the opponent or everyone else will ensure my own nutrition. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. So, deciding which decision in distributing the cake is better for the individual, group and social level is politics.

Before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, there was no such thing as a 'state' or 'nation-state' in the world. There were different empires and one language was used as the official language of the empire for various reasons. Not all the time the official language was the language of the ruler or the majority; But job seekers would learn that language anyway. Persian was the official language of India during the medieval Sultanate and Mughal period. Both Hindus and Muslims learned Persian in hopes of getting employed in various offices of the empire. In Europe too, people studied Latin in hopes of getting a job in the royal government. From the 18th century, English replaced Persian as the official language in India. English was the mother tongue of a very few foreign rulers.

When nation-states began to be established in Europe after the French Revolution, it was found that multiple language-speaking populations lived within the borders of the same nation-state due to coincidental or arbitrary boundaries. One of the differences between the official language of an empire and a nation-state is that the importance of the language depends on the number of speakers in the nation-state, which means that the language of the majority is the official or state language of the nation-state. The administrative works and the judiciary use the language and the medium of education is also the state language.

This system has both pros and cons. A nation whose language is recognized as the national language does not have to learn the language again. Moreover, they have more control over the language as mother tongue or first language; But those nations whose mother tongue is not the state language, they face numerous challenges. They are forced to learn a new language. If the language is not learned or cannot be learned, the nation is bound to fall behind by being deprived of many benefits. For this reason, the Language Movement took place from 1948-52. 'Ora amar mukher bhasha kaira nite chai...' (They want to snatch my mother tongue). The situation was exactly that. The Pakistanis didn’t want to snatch our mother tongue rather by not recognizing our mother tongue as the state language, they 'maybe' wanted to make us deprived of state benefits. It would have been so late for Bengalis to learn Urdu to get government jobs that by then all the economic and political power would have been in the hands of the Urdu speaking people of Pakistan.

I said 'maybe' above because Urdu was not a language of Pakistan. Different communities of Pakistan like Sindhi, Punjabi, Baloch, Pathan also had to learn Urdu. But their educated society already knew some Urdu, because Urdu/Hindi was the lingua franca of India long before the partition. Also, since Urdu is written using the Arabic alphabet, familiarity with the Arabic alphabet also facilitated their learning of Urdu. Because it was written in the Arabic alphabet, Pakistani intellectuals and rulers confused Urdu with Arabic and considered Urdu an Islamic language. The people of North India have been jealous and hated the inhabitants of Eastern India since prehistoric times, as per the Mahabharata and the other mythological books. A language developed in the literature and culture of Eastern India, which had already won the Nobel Prize, Bengali was a caste hatred due to the ignorance and unfamiliarity of the North Indians and Pakistanis. Bangabandhu's Unfinished Memoirs also speaks of this alienation and hatred.

It is generally believed that the nation-state should have only one official language, because multiple official languages are an obstacle to the formation of a united nation. In 1952, Pakistanis shot Bengali students on this pretext. 'O tui Dhaka shohor rokte bhasaili!' (You have flooded Dhaka streets in blood). It is not essential to have a national language for building a nation. Countries like Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Philippines etc. where multiple national languages are recognized, the prosperity of those countries also proves the demand of one national language wrong. If we consider the number of speakers, there was no reason why Bengali could not be one of the state languages of Pakistan.

Both French and Dutch are official languages in Belgium, as significant numbers of people speak both languages. The number of speakers is also the reason why Switzerland has French, German and Italian as official languages. According to the United Nations, out of a total of 195 nation states, 178 have recognized official languages, of which 101 states have more than one state languages. The United States, Mexico, and Australia have no recognized or de jure official languages. Neither did Italy, but most recently, in 1999, Italian was recognized as an official language by the Italian government. According to the constitution of Bangladesh, the de jure official language is only one: Bengali. According to the Bangla Bhasha Procholon Ain, 1987, non-performance of education, judicial and official duties in Bengal is a punishable criminal offence.

The above statistics mean that about 50 percent of the countries in the world recognize the linguistic rights of the nations involved and about 40 percent of the countries do not recognize this right. The remaining 10 percent state de jure does not want to decide on the official language. This means, 50 percent of the states want to share the cake with all. 40 percent don't want to give others a share of the cake while the rest 10 percent de facto may want to share or may not, but de jure does not want to admit anything about it.

Every language competes. This competition aims to gain recognition. A language can have four types of recognition: 1) social recognition, 2) political recognition, 3) economic recognition and 4) international recognition. English language has all these four recognitions. There is no recognition of the Garo or Kokbarok languages. A language that lacks social recognition is usually not a means of literature.

During the Middle Ages, the Sultans of Bengal encouraged literary practice in the then standard Bengali, as Bengali had a social recognition. They did not encourage literary practice in Garo, Kokbarok or Chittagong dialects, because these language-dialects did not have social recognition or were less popularity than Bengali. In 13th century Germany, Martin Luther translated the Bible into vernacular German rather than standard German, which gained social acceptance of this sub-language. That spoken German evolved into modern German.

The more recognized the language, the more successful the language is politically. A politically successful or powerful person or group will want to dominate the politically unsuccessful person. Similarly, the language that has more recognition tends to dominate other languages. Only the language or the speaking community seeks political recognition if it has the power. "Dabaya rakhte parbana" (You can't subdue us anymore!). The language movement of 1952 and Bangabandhu's hunger strike in Faridpur Jail was basically a struggle to gain political recognition of the Bengali language.

When two different languages come into contact due to historical, political, economic reasons, the more recognized language can be called the 'advanced' or superstrate language and the relatively less recognized language is called the 'inferior' or substrate language. Words from creditor languages are used in debtor languages, the reverse is almost never the case. This is evidenced by the fact that many words from Old Persian entered the Bengali lexicon during the Middle Ages. Many English words have entered the Bengali lexicon since the beginning of the English period. Similarly, many Bengali words are also entering Garo or Kakbarok language, because in the language situation of Bangladesh, Bengali is creditor and Garo is debtor language.

Many states make even a superior language - not the mother tongue of the majority - an official language. Example: India or Nigeria where English is the de facto official language. Urdu, the language of India, is the official language of Pakistan. These language situations are called 'exoglossic' or 'extralingual' language situations. Many states use the language of one of the constituent nations as an official language. Such a language situation is called 'endoglossic' or 'interlingual' language situation. In Burma, this linguistic situation is maintained - Burmese, Karen, Rohingya, Chinese, etc. have their own languages, but the mother tongue of the Burmese nation is used as the official language.

In the above two situations, the citizens of the nation-state accept a language other than their mother tongue as the official language. First, when they do not have the power to claim their own language as an official language. In the state of Pakistan, Bengalis had the power to claim the mother tongue Bengali as one of the state languages of Pakistan. Neither Sindhis nor Balochs had that power. Secondly, if a mother tongue does not have a script and if no advanced literature is written in the mother tongue, then there is no demand to make that mother tongue an official language. The fact that literature is written in a particular language is a proof of the power of expression in that language.

Chittagong has more population than many countries in the world, at least Israel; But the people of Chittagong have never demanded to make their mother tongue the official language, because they do not believe that the Chittagong language is suitable to be the official language. On the other hand, modern Hebrew, an artificial language, was established by the Jews as the state language of Israel. Modern Hebrew is an artificial language, because a pidgin language was first created by superimposing Hebrew words on Yiddish syntax. After several generations learned this pidgin as their mother tongue, the language became a creole, or vernacular. Because of Burma's special political environment, the Rohingyas feel that their mother tongue, originally a dialect of Chittagong, should be one of the official languages of Rohingya Burma.

In a society where a superstrat and a substrat language coexist, the people of that society want the superior language to be the medium of instruction, if not in all subjects, at least in some subjects. This mentality is seen everywhere in the world. Many in Bangladesh want an extralingual or exoglossic language status, that is, they favor English as the official language. Pakistanis have created a similar linguistic situation by making Urdu, an Indian language, the official language.

In many African countries, in the Maghreb region (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco), is already established as one of the official languages. English is the official language of 58 countries, French of 28 countries, Arabic of 23 countries and Spanish of 20 countries. In the case of a multilingual country like India, there is an argument in favor of keeping English as one of the official languages or maintaining an extra-linguistic status, because a common language is essential for the nation-building, or communication needs of the multilingual people of India.

To meet this need, as easily as the lingua franca and lingua academica English can be made acceptable to the Bengali or Tamil-speaking people, Tamil or Marathi cannot be made so easily acceptable to the Bengali-speakers or to all the nations of India. But because of Bollywood, the promotion and spread of Hindi is increasing.

As mentioned earlier, the language that will be the official language, the language users will enjoy many benefits of the state. The privileged classes in Bangladesh are in favor of making English the official language (just as the privileged classes in Pakistan were in favor of Urdu or English), because firstly, they 'think' they know English and consider Bengali to be the language of the minors. If English is the official language, they and their children will be able to enjoy all the benefits of the state, because most of the people of the country will never learn English, or even if they learn it, they will lag behind the privileged class in terms of linguistic ability. Apart from this, the beneficiary class of the Bangladesh state is not willing to pay that cost and investment required to make Bengali the official language. One of the reasons for this non-investment is that it will not benefit the privileged class, but the small people in their eyes. The homogenous language-situation prevailed in Pakistan in the fifties, and it was in such a context that the language movement took place.

The only difference is that the pro-Pakistani were hostile to the Bengali language openly, by declaration. The anti-Bengali people of Bangladesh secretly oppose the Bengali language. February 21 was National Language Movement Day. 'Rashtro bhasha Bangla chai' I want the national language Bangla!' This day has become International Mother Language Day. No one disagrees about the rights of mother tongue. The main question is whether the mother tongue will be the state language, or whether the mother tongue will be given social, political, economic, international recognition or not. A language that has all the recognition should live long with respect. A language that has no recognition is in threat of lose in a competitive world.

There is no such thing as what is convenient for the class will be convenient for the nation. Most people in Bangladesh can never be taught enough English to make English a viable and mass-oriented official language. Making English the official language means making the language the medium of education, judiciary, and administration. Secondly, English-based administration and judiciary would be purely anti-people, because firstly, serving the people in a language they do not know is a waste of public money and secondly, justice cannot be expected in an unknown language.

If the attempt to make English an official language is successful, it will hamper effective and universal education. Disruption of education will disrupt sustainable development. If the development is interrupted, the Bengalis who are going to the Middle East today to offer labor, they will be forced to go to Burma to serve. In the fifties, the economic status of Malaysia and Bangladesh was almost equal. Now Bengalis go to Malaysia and give service. It cannot be claimed that Malaysia's language policy has no influence behind it. The decision to make English the official language will prove to be very detrimental to the Bengali language and the Bengali nation.

The Pakistanis emphatically denied the right to the Bengali language. The Bengalis countered and forced the Pakistani state to accept their mother tongue as the official language. After independence, it is Bangladesh that is losing to its beneficiaries and ruling class, who are against allowing Bengali as an official language. The same Bangladesh is again deciding to teach children of minority groups in their own mother tongue.

Back to the topic of cake. Either I or my people will eat the cake, or everyone will eat it together. The first decision is good, the second is better, because (Rabindranath wrote) 'Tumi jare niche felo se tomare badhichhe niche, poshchate felichho jake se tomare tanichhe poshchate'. In the context of the above discussion, it can be said that language politics in nation-states can be of at least two types: 1) 'Jor Jaar Muluk Tar' (Might is right), and 2) 'Soto ful futte dou' (Let a hundred flowers bloom). It is too early to say which of these two polities will prevail in the future, but the second decision seems overall to be the better one.

Author: Linguist and Professor, Institute of Modern Languages, University of Dhaka.