Bangladesh Heritage Foundation

Apotheosis of a Movement

Ambassador Wali-ur Rahman

February 21, 1952. Many of us remember the day vividly - many amongst us would relive the experience, the desire, the poignant cry for recognition; recognition of the history, of thousand years or even more. Hundreds came forward, many laid down their lives, and sanctified the day of days with their blood, the blood that did not cry for vengeance, but only wanted recognition of a cause, a history, a culture, a tradition. The blood of Barkat and Salam was the symbol of sacrifice and determination and also of defiance perhaps, to expiate, as it were, the blood thirst of an unknown spirit lurking in Phoumena. But did the blood go in vain?  No. It fertilized and transfigured the whole nation into an invincible armada. The mass movement which followed made it impossible for the antagonists to ignore the upsurge of the people to get due recognition for Bangla. The recognition came, the harvest- time arrived, but only after Osiris and Isis were satisfied.

The movement that started in 1952 found its fullest expression in 1971 with the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent sovereign state. The dream of a Bang tribe of the Dravidian Stock, which was pushed out of their original home by the Aryan expansionists probably, thousand years before the birth of Christ, became a reality.

 But have we reached goal?  Have we been able give due recognition to Bangla? The answer is difficult to find. Perhaps, we have not yet been able to measure up to the fact that to make our nation-state a viable progressive entity we must be all Bangalees and Banglabhasha should be out principal vehicle of expression in everything. The hangover of the past centuries must be buried in order to preserve our entity as a proud and thriving nation. And it is not a foreign tongue - English or French or Spanish – that helps make it. Although the foreign language - is our case English - need not be necessarily discarded, on the contrary, it should be allowed to find its own place as a secondary language, to work as a kind of window to the outside world.  But Bangla must be the principal language in our communication in every walk of life - in writing, speaking, cogitating and even in dreaming. Before independence Indonesia had barely 10% literacy. Today the rate is over 90%.  This has been largely due to the fact that Bahasa Indonesia has supplanted Bahasa Belanda (Dutch) as the vehicle of communication. Schools, colleges and universities all teach in Bahasa Indonesia and the government conducts its business in Bahasa only. In the Philippines also Spanish has been replaced by Tagalog the local language as the langua Franca of the Fil1ipinos.

In Bangladesh, Bangla must be introduced at all spheres of activities. The fear, expressed by certain quarters that with Bengali as the main language we may recede into an intellectual backwater is unfounded. Japan, one of the most advanced countries of the world does not write and converse in anything but Japanese. Any publications, brought out by Oxbridge Universities, Penguin, Methuen, Chato and Windus, Dell, Magro Hill or Harparr and Row, can be picked up from the Tokyo bookstalls in Japanese a month after its first publication.

Bangla everywhere should be the slogan, this is not only a sine qua non for mass literacy - it is the very guarantee for the preservation of our separate identity, our distinct nationality, and a resurgent nationhood.

Ambassador Wali-ur Rahman : Former Secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chairman, Bangladesh Heritage Foundation. Member, International Instt. of Strategic Studies (IISS). Visiting Fellow, QEH, Oxford, 1993-94.