The pervasive problem of linguistic discrimination

We did not fight against any language, not even Urdu. Our language movement was a fight against a ruler of a ruled nation. Language itself has no power to exploit others. However, it can become a tool of exploitation for a ruler. After the partition in 1947, within a year, the people of the then East Pakistan realised that they were trapped by another coloniser in place of the British. The new Pakistani rulers wanted to use East Pakistan as a vicinity for their exploitation. So, they almost immediately targeted Bangla, the language spoken by the East Pakistani people, to destroy the morale of the East Pakistanis and make them subservient to the West Pakistani ruling elite.

Thomas Macaulay, a British lawmaker, addressed the British Parliament on February 2, 1832, and said that until and unless they destroyed the strong morality and integrity of Indians, they would not be able to continue their rule forever. The Pakistani ruling clique also understood this and declared that 'Urdu and Urdu will only be the state language of Pakistan'. We denied and revolted. That is why some people may think that we fought against Urdu and initiated a hate campaign against the language. In reality, we fought against the Pakistan rulers who used Urdu to subdue the Bangalee people. Urdu was not the mother tongue of any of the four provinces of West Pakistan. They thought Bangla was the language of the Hindu people. We fought for Bangla and Urdu to both be the state languages of Pakistan. As many political scientists have said, this was the beginning of Bengali nationalism.

After 24 years of struggle and the war of liberation in 1971, we won, Pakistan itself disintegrated, and the People's Republic of Bangladesh emerged in 1971.

A new history began. The education system has been completely destroyed. Madrasa education and English medium schools are on the rise. Privatisation of education is a death blow to the national education system, making education a sought-after commodity. The standard of education has lowered. Once Leo Tolstoy said, "The strength of the Government lies in the people's ignorance, and the Government knows this, and will therefore always oppose true enlightenment." The present education system produces millions of so-called educated people living in medieval darkness, and religiosity has taken the place of secularism, one of the main pillars of democracy.

In 1948, the UN General Assembly had taken the human rights charter (26) that 'everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.' In 1959, the UN General Assembly had again decided that 'the child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory, at least in the elementary stages.' In 1835, when Persian was replaced by English as the medium of instruction, William Adam, a Christian clergyman, continued in his famous education despatch that 'the government should establish a national education system through the medium of the Vernacular tongue. If the use of the language of the people will enable every man to understand the statement of his own case, even when he is wholly ignorant of this mother tongue except as a spoken language, how much more complete his protection will be if he knows it as a written language'.

Now I can say categorically that our ruling classes failed to fulfil these regulations of the UN or human rights organisations and the decision given by William Adam almost two hundred years ago. Our mother tongue has been neglected from the very beginning of our independence. Every government paid much more attention to English and religious education by allocating extra money for their development. Moreover, our national constitution upholds only the Bangla language as the state language of Bangladesh, ignoring the languages of the 45 aboriginal clan groups who have been living here for thousands of years. British colonisation has gone, and so has the Pakistani semi-colonisation, but linguistic discrimination still persists.

Shahidul Islam is a former Professor of Applied Chemistry at Rajshahi University.