●The recent sacrifice of bearded Rajesh-Tapas against the imposition of Urdu in the state!
●literally what is the Language Day_ September 20th or February 21st ?
February 1st is a day of pride for the people of West Bengal including Bangladesh and all Bengali speaking people.It is also known as "Martyrs Day" and "International Mother Language Day".
It is marked as a day full of sad and glorious memories of the Bengali people's language movement.On this day in 1952 (8 Falgun, 1358, Thursday), many youths were martyred in police firing on students who were agitating to make Bengali one of the state languages of East Pakistan.
Notable among them Rafiq, Jabbar, Shafiur, Salam, Barkat and many others. So this day is marked as Martyr's Day. According to the decision taken by the United Nations on November 17, 1999, International Mother Language Day is celebrated every year on February 21.
It is said that Khwaja Nazimuddin's position and his speech, taken for political reasons, added a new dimension to the language movement. The sense of deprivation in East Pakistan's Bengalis was awakened more strongly by his announcement.
Rejecting Khwaja Nazimuddin's speech, spontaneous strikes and demonstrations started in East Pakistan from the next day. Dhaka University students played an important role in that.Political, cultural and professional communities of East Pakistan participated in the conference under the leadership of Bhasani.
A general strike was announced on 21st February. Section 144 was issued in Dhaka University and its surrounding areas to prevent the strike and the martyr's day was born out of violation.On that day in 1952, Muhammad Mahfuz Hossain was working in the hospital's emergency department as a student of Dhaka Medical College.
In the interview given to BBC Bangla three years ago, the picture of that day has emerged in his description.In that interview, he said, " On the afternoon of February 21st, I admitted three gunshot victims to the hospital. Rafiq, who was shot in the forehead, was declared dead on sight, and Barkat, who was shot in the thigh, died in the night, in front of my eyes."
Students were fired upon near Dhaka Medical College.He also said, " We could hear a lot of noise from outside. We heard that many people were injured in the firing.The emergency ward was filled in no time. Many of the injured are unconscious, and the emergency department is overcrowded with people and doctors."
The exact number of martyrs in the language movement is still not available. In addition to Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and Shafiur, many others were martyred in police firing that day and the next day. Various books on language movement have come up.
This killing did not suppress the movement for the right to mother tongue. It was in this movement that it became clear that a sense of unity was unlikely to be awakened in the minds of the inhabitants of a state created by merging two different linguistic nationalities of two territories located at a distance of two thousand kilometers.
The opposition BJP in West Bengal is celebrating 20th September as 'Mother Language Day' in the state, and the party leadership is campaigning vigorously on social media.Two years ago, they say, two BJP workers were killed when police opened fire on a mob protesting the appointment of an Urdu teacher in a school in Uttar Dinajpur district on this day - in their memory the day is remembered as Mother Language Day.
However, many literary or linguists of the state do not agree with BJP's argument that Bengali language is endangered in West Bengal due to the influence of Urdu or Arabic.The ruling party Trinamool Congress also feels that the importation of this new day in place of International Language Day on February 21 is nothing but an attempt to distort history.
However, more than two years after this incident, on 7 May 1954, the Parliament of Pakistan passed a resolution recognizing Bengali as a state language. According to the Constitution, the recognition of the state language took another two years to come into effect.The seeds of an independent state called Bangladesh were sown in this movement about the mother tongue.
Apart from this, many events are held in West Bengal on May 19 every year to commemorate the language martyrs of Barak Valley in 1961.However, BJP state president Dilip Ghosh has been campaigning strongly on Facebook and social media for the past few days that Mother Language Day should now be observed on the day of September 20.
As the reason, he says, two youths, Tapas Barman and Rajesh Sarkar, BJP supporters of Darivit, were killed by the police on this day in protest against the invasion of Urdu in the state. In the words of West Bengal BJP Chief Spokesperson and General Secretary Sayantan Bose,
" Leftists and Congressmen have celebrated Mother Language Day on 21st February in this state.It was a Bangladesh incident, it had nothing to do with this state.Though we are not denying February 21st, the recent sacrifice of bearded Rajesh-Tapas against the imposition of Urdu in the state demands our attention."
🖊️Written by(Article made by) - Gargi Sengupta🖋️(From Berhampore)
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