“la parole exportée”

Ekushey February (”on the 21^st of February”)

What happened on this day, 56 years ago?

Ekushey has become a symbol dear to the heart of all Bangladeshis, but it is very important for the rest of the world too, which is why UNESCO chose to make this date the International Mother Language Day.

From its birth on 14 August 1947, Pakistan, including its Eastern province, later to become Bangladesh, has been plagued with a difficult political situation. In that context, the Bengali Language Movement was part of the political struggle for the Eastern province to achieve recognition from the central government in Lahore, of its importance in terms of population size and resources, in order to achieve political representation, and the right to its own identity, including to having Bangla, its language, declared an official language of Pakistan. This would have for instance enabled a large number of Bengalis to be employed in the country’s administration, instead of being locked out of government employment because Urdu was a foreign language to a majority of them.

21 February, 1952 was the day when those who rebelled in the name of the Bengali Language Movement lost their lives under the repression from the central powers.

This shows that the recognition of mother languages is not there just to satisfy intellectual or idealistic dreams. Languages are part of the components of a nation. They can be used by a dominant group to impose its rule on other groups. There were similar battles in many countries, including mine. French is the main language of France, but for a long time it wasn’t the only one.

The poem below, is known to be the first poem written after the Ekushey events. It is published in full (in its translated form) here.

Part of it is recorded here, in Bengali. Mahbub Ul Alam Chowdhury, the author, died in December 2007.

THE FIRST POEM ON EKUSHEY
Mahbub Ul Alam Chowdhury

Translated from Bengali by Kabir Chowdhury

The poem was written at 7.00 pm on 21st February 1952.

I have not come, where they laid down their lives
under the upward looking Krishnachura trees,
to shed tears.
I have not come, where endless patches of blood
glow like so many fiery flowers, to weep.

Today I am not overwhelmed by grief
Today I am not maddened with anger
Today I am only unflinching
in my determination.

The child who will nevermore get a chance
to rush into his father’s arms,
the house-wife who, shielding the lamp
with her sari, will nevermore wait
by the door for her husband,
the mother who will nevermore draw
to her breast with boundless joy
her returning son,
the youngman who, before collapsing
on the earth, tried again and again
to conjure before his eyes the vision
of his beloved,
in their name,
in the name of those brothers and sisters,
in the name of my language,
nourished by the heritage of a thousand years,
in the name of the language in which
I am accustomed to addressing my mother,
in the name of my native land,
I say, I have come today,
here on the open grounds of the university,
to demand their death by hanging,
the death of those who killed
my brothers and sisters indiscriminately.

I have not come here to weep for them
who gave their lives under Ramna’s
sun-scorched Krishnachura trees
for their language,
those forty or more who laid down their lives
for Bangla, them mothertongue,
for the dignity of a country’s great culture,
for the literary heritage of Alaol,
Rabindranath, Kaikobad and Nazrul,
for keeping alive the bhatiali, bawl,
kirton and the ghazal,
those who laid down their lives
or Nazrul’s unforgettable lines:
“The soil of my native land
is purer than the purest gold”

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 5:50 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.