February 21st-International Mother Language Day

We, human being are special creature on earth. We have many amazing Excellencies which separate us from all other living beings. Among all creativity of human being, language is placed in foremost position. Language is the only way to express our feelings each other.  Do you want to know the number of language at present existing in the world? I hope you will be surprised to know that there are 6,700 recognized languages in the world, among them 10 languages are spoken worldwide and Bengali language is 7^th most popular language or spoken language in the world. Here, in my article I want to explain the 21^st February-International Mother Language day. This article is written to show the highest respect to martyrs who laid their life to attain mother tongue Bengali in 1952, February 21.

I think most of my readers are not well conversed with 21^st February or International Mother Language Day. Sorry, I don’t like to make it confused, before 1999, 21^st February was only respected by Bengali spoken people or Bangladeshi people to show the revere to 1952’s language martyrs but 17 November, 1999, UNESCO declared this event as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the 1952’s language movement. At present this 21^st February is observed as International Mother Language Day in more than 188 countries all over the world.

International mother language is actually the recognition of language movement that was held in 1952 in Bangladesh by the students of Dhaka University to retrieve their mother language, Bengali as their state language and in that movement several student were killed by Pakistani army.

I think this is not all to understand the real history; I would like to elaborate the story a little bit for my readers to make them understand why the movement was held and why Pakistani blood sucker army shoot them down.

If you know the history of Subcontinent, I hope you already got the point. However, after division of subcontinent in 1947,  three nations-India, East Pakistan(Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, on March 1948, Pakistani Governor general Mohammed Ali Jinnah declared Urdu as the only state language for both East Pakistan(Bangladesh) and West Pakistan. But this statement was not accepted by 70 million people of East Pakistan who speak Bengali for their eternal expression, and raised their voice against Pakistani ruler which results the Bengali Language Movement in 21^st February, 1952.

On 21^st February 1952 (8 Falgun 1359 Bangla) students of Dhaka city called for a provincial strike in the city of Dhaka (Present capital city of Bangladesh). The Pakistani ruler called upon a curfew to step down their protest and was restrained down so that they cannot crack the curfew. The Pakistani Police fired on the students gathering despite their peaceful remonstration and several students (four were recognized) were exterminated on that day.

The United Nation celebrates the International Mother Language Day every year on February 21 as mother tongue miscellany and diversity. The organization wants to spread the remembrance of four martyrs as they sacrifice their life for their mother tongue; it also wants to create social awareness to keep protected language, culture and heritage of each nation in the present world.

21^ST February also observed by UNESCO member states and its wing center to persuade linguistic and cultural hodgepodge and multilingualism. February 21^st is also called Shohid Dibosh or Shaheed Day in Bangladesh and people also celebrate national holiday on the event of this day.

Finally, I want to say that 21^st February is not only for Bangladeshi people it should be a great source of encouragement for every people in the world to love their mother language, culture and heritage as a whole to protect the language of many minority group worldwide.