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NAME - SHREYAHSRI ROY

ClASS-XII C
SUBJECT - ENGLISH PROJECT
YEAR - 2023-24

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 (Affiliated to CBSE Code: 15660) ~
G.T. Road, Rahul Foundation Campus
Rajbandh, Durgapur, WestBengal-713212

• Name - Shreyashri Roy

• Class - XII C
• Roll no. -
• Subject -English
• Topic - "The l4«inguage Movement of 1952 in Bangladesh"
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• Year - 2023-24 ..

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A STRUGGLE FOR LINGUISTIC

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I take this opportunity to Express my r ,, 1
~ratitude and
-1 "Y English teacher,
)r her exemplary gL..L _______ -,-..ionitoring
,.. _____ - 6 i.tuu.t t11c; course of this project. The help given by her ,
time to time, shall carry me a long way in the long journey of
life, or which I am about to embark.
I would also thank the almighty, my family for giving me
their constant support and my fellow mates for their useful
inputs and opinions.
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Shreyashri Roy, a student of class-XII C

, has successfully completed the research on the given
project titled-"Lr ~ 1.desh", under
the guidanc e o~ .iring the year
2023-2 4 as part '-'D0L ~u.1.1.
v.1. l,ll\., lass XII English
and that it is as per the guidelines :BSE.

l l l

Signature of external examiner Signature of English teacher

 INDEX

1. Acknow ledgeme nt
Z. Certifica te
3. Introduc tion
4. Cause of moveme nt
5. Importan t instance of the moveme nt
_6. Importan ce of Mother's Languag e Day
7. Conclusi on
8. Bibliogr aphy

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INTRODUCTION
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an
individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas
without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to
freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human
rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional
law that protects free speech. Language Movement began in 1948
and reached its climax in the killing of 21 February 1952, and
ended in the adoption of Bangla as one of the state languages of
Pakistan. The question as to what would be the state language of
Pakistan was raised immediately after its creation. The central
leaders and the Urdu-speaking intellectuals of Pakistan declared that
Urdu be the state language of Pakistan, just as Hindi was the state
language of India. The students and intellectuals of East Pakistan,
however, demanded that Bangla be made one of the state languages.
After a lot of controversy over the language issue, the final demand
from East Pakistan was that Bangla must be the official language and
the medium of instruction in East Pakistan and for the central
government it would be one of the state languages along with Urdu.

Page1
CAUSE OF THE MOVEMENT:
DISCUSSION AND ANALYfICAL PART-
After the partition of 194 7, East Bengal came to know as East
Pakistan. When they were given a choice in 194 7 to stay with
either India or Pakistan, they chose the latter, hoping that a
Muslim majority region would benefit East Bengal rather than
India. However, their hopes for East Pakistan soon fell as they
realized that the West Pakistanis were making economic
policies only in their favor (Niaz Asadullah, 2006).
Despite the poor conditions of East Pakistan finance and
national services caused by the deportation of the Hindus
during the partition, the West Pakistani people did nothing
about it.
On top of that, they started to exploit East Pakistan for the
development of West Pakistan, which is quite similar to the
two decades of colonization of the British people (Ahmed,
2019). It was pretty clear that the creation of Pakistan was
nothing but purely political as country division based on
religion is a very insufficient justification (Ahmed, 2019).
Hence, the country would have been better positioned if there
was secularism in politics instead of communalism .

•••
 Soae Econoalc lndlcatora

!!!l Pakutan ~ Paktacai

AN• (la equ•r• ailtt) 310,236

Populatioa, (19 ,0 utlaate) 70 all Uoa 60 &Ulloa

tlY•'"'1••r plan alloc•tloci,

lac l21 68%

2ad 321 681

)rd 36t 641

4th (Wlllu~, to be 1q,leccnud) ~2.5: 67.,:

rore1&a aid allouttan 20-lOI 70-801

tipo« • am tna ,o-10x 30-50%

lapot"t 1-i,enditun 25-)0% 70-7S%

l1tduttrlal u11t1 ow01d by l•naalh 111

Civil llrviCt Job• 16-20% a>-84%

W tt•t'J Job• 101 901

laourcH tran.af•rred fro11 fut

to Vat b1tv . .n 1941~9 10d 1968-19 a..31,120 Dillion •

Figure 1: Some F.conomic Indicators during the Pakistan Ru.le

From the above figure it can be said foreign aid allocations,

civil service jobs, and military jobs
were always focused towards West Pakistan by a huge
difference. Besides that, between 1948-49 and 1968-69, a
massive amount of wealth was transferred to West Pakistan.
Hence, the ignition of the language movement was also backed
up by the economic oppression of the West
Pakistani.

One of the government's objectives after the formation of

Pakistan was the setup of an
official language. The government favored Urdu solely because
this language was used during
medieval age Muslim rulers of India and Bengal (Day
Translations, 2018). However, the
percentage of the language spoken across united Pakistan says
otherwise. While Urdu was only
the language of only 7% of the population of United Pakistan,
the percentage of Bengali
speaking individuals was 54% across United Pakistan
(Fathema, 2019). This led to the formation
of Tamuddin Majlis in September 1948 to make Bengali one of
Pakistan's state languages. Thus,
on February 25, 1948, Dhirendranath Datta proposed about
Bengali being one of the state
languages of Pakistan in Karachi. He did this at a very
significant personal risk, and his proposal
is considered the stepping stone towards the creation of
Bangladesh (Correspondent, 2018). The
then-president of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, believed
that it was essential for a country to
have a single language to maintain unity. His famous and most
well-known quoting from his
speech in 1948 at Race Course, Dhaka was:

"Let me make it vezy clear to you that the state language of

Pakistan is going to be Urdu
and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is
really the enemy ofPakistan.
Without one state language, no nation can remain tied up
solidly together and function. Look at
the history of other countries. Therefore, so far as the state
language is concerned, Pakistan~
shall be Urdu. "

Jinnah also believed that it was essential to exclude the Bengali

language as it was
"Sanscritized". While it is true that the Bengali language
emerged from the Indian Subcontinent,
it does not justify the statement that the Bengali language is
related to a specific religion (Jubayer
Shahadat, 2011). It was pretty clear that Jinnah had fears of
losing his powers, and thus his
objective was to use religion to exploit and remain in power as
long as possible. To make matters
worse, Mohammad Ali Jinnah passed away in September 1948
without giving any permanent
solution. His death was fallowed by the assassination of Liaquat
Ali Khan in 1951, and as a
result, Khawaja Naziumuddin became the prime minister.
However, things did not seem to change as Nazimuddin added
more fuel to the fire by repeating the same statement of Urdu
being the only state language of Pakistan in one of the meetings
in Paltan Maidan, Dhaka (Ahmad & Ishwaran, 2017). In
response to such kind of oppression by the West Pakistanis, it
was decided that a strike was to be held on February 21, 1952.
However, the Pakistan government was too clever to let the
situation get out of hand as they knew very clearly that the
students' passion for this issue was enough to remove them
from power. As a result, the government banned all kinds of
procession under Section 144, and the aim of this move by the
government was quite clear to everyone (The Daily Star,
2014). Despite the ban, the students still went out with their
non-violent procession. However, the police used the official
ban as an excuse and decided to open fire at the students
around the Medical College hostel. This led to
some protesters' death, including Rafiquddin Ahmed,
Mohammad Salauddin, Abul Barkat, Abdus Salam, and Abdul
Jabbar.

Fig 2: 'Moder gorob' statue, built to honour the life of the protesters
IMPORT ANT INSTANCE OF THE
MOVEMENT:

The language movement was placed as a very significant

event of our history, and to remember and pay respect to the
martyrs of the language movement; The Shaheed Minar was
constructed. However, there were several obstacles towards
the construction of Shaheed Minar as it was a primary target
for the Pakistani Army (Jubayer Shahadat, 2011). This just
shows the amount of hatred the West Pakistanis had towards
the Bangladeshi people. It was constructed and destroyed
several times before it was reconstructed in 1973, a few
years after the liberation war (Jubayer Shahadat, 2011).
As we have previousl y seen that the partition of 194 7 was
never meant for the bettermen t of different religious people
instead it was more of a tactical and political scheme of
Jinnah to take power and control. The root of all problems is
allowing religion-b ased politics. All these problems would
not have arisen if strict secularistic politics existed in the first
place. Jinnah's main goal was to take power in West Pakistan
and exploit East Pakistan as much as possible since he never
intended to take in East Pakistan. It was effortless for him to
do it since he was able to expose the weakness in non-
secularistic politics. In other words, they were kind of
"Forced" to take East Pakistan with them. This is why we can
see that the initial build-up of the language movemen t, more
like a catalyst of the event, was the injustice that the
Pakistani governme nt was causing to East Pakistan's
economic and social development.

When the language issue arose, Jinnah realized that

introduci ng the Bengali language as the state language may
plant the seed of Bengali nationalism among the East
Pakistani people. As a result, he tried to sabotage that
opportuni ty by making Urdu the official state language. For
this to happen, he used the hoax religious excuse of labelling
the Bengali language as something that Muslims should not
use, that is, "Sanscritized". It is also notable that the language
movement's significant contributors were the students, as the
politician's contributi on was comparatively low.
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Fig S: Students marching for language movement

The politicians were only supporting the language

movement to secure a rigid position in the election, whereas
the students were the main driving force of the language
issue (Jubayer Shahadat, 2011). The events of the Language
movement are considered to be the stepping stone towards
the creation of Bangladesh as the reaction of the Pakistani
government as enough to prove that there was a need for an
autonomous and separate country for East Pakistan. Finally,
after much stru.We, the Bengali language was officially
accepted as one of the state languages of Pakistan on May 7,
1954 (LS Desk, 2019), and many years later, in November
1999, UNESCO recognized the Bangladeshi Language
movement as an international event.
SIGNIFICANCE OF INTERNATIONAL
MOTHER'S LANGUAGE DAY:

The importance and significance of the international

mother's language day are enormous. It not only allows us to
recognize and respect the martyrs of the language movement
but is also equally crucial for the continuation and cultural
development of a nation. According to UNESCO's official
website, about 40% of the world's total population does not
have the privilege of getting basic rights to education in their
mother tongue (UNESCO, 2018). Thus, this event is
internationally important for the recognition of language
diversity across the globe.
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CONCLUSION

After completing this project, it can be said that the official

language issue mainly caused the language movement start-
up, and apart from that, the suppression of East Pakistan's
economy and social development is also a major contributing
factor. The Pakistani government did everything in their
power to oppose the idea of the Bengali language as the state
language by using religion as an excuse. They even stooped
so low that open-fired at the students' peaceful protest, all
because of fear of losing their power to exploit. These
wrongdoings are enough to suggest that East Pakistan could
no longer develop under the then Pakistani government and
that an autonomous and separate state was necessary for East
Pakistan and thus the commencement of the path towards
the creation of Bangladesh. In addition to all these, the
aftermath of the language movement was the creation of
Shaheed Minar, which has a unique place in the history of
Bangladesh, and the international mother's language day
that serves as a source of preservation of languages across
the world.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmad, A., & Ishwaran, K. (Eds.). (2017, October 5). Bhasha Andolon (Bangladesh
language
movement 1948-1952) - Khwaja Nazimuddin maintains Urdu stance - History of
Bangladesh. Retrieved from Londoni website: http:/ /www.londoni.co/in dex.php/24-
history-of-bangladesh/ 1952-bhasha-andolon /211-bhasha-andolon-bangladesh-langua ge-
movement-1948-19 52-khwaja-nazimuddin-maintains-urdu- stance-history-of-bangladesh
Ahmed, F. (2019). The struggle in Bangladesh. Critical Asian Studies, 4(1), 2-22.
https:/ / doi.org/10.1080/14 672715.1972.10406 271
Correspondent, S. (2018, March 25). Martyr Dhirendranath Datta remembered. Retrieved
May 4,
2021, from The Daily Star website: https:/ /www.thedailystar.n et/city/martyr-
dhirendranath-datta-remembered-155304 7
Day Translations. (2018, May 23). The Importance of Studying the Urdu Language Now.
Retrieved from Day Translations Blog website:
https:/ /www.daytranslations.com/blog/studying-urdu-langu age/
Fathema, K. (2019, February 21). Why was there a battle of Urdu-Bangla? Retrieved from
New
Age website: https:/ /www.newagebd.ne t/article/654 72/why-was-there-a -battle-of-urdu-
bangla
Jubayer Shahadat, M. (2011). Language Movement Museum and Library, Dhaka,
Bangladesh.
Retrieved from University of Massachusetts Amherst website:
https:/ / scholatworks. umass.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 1780&context=theses