Dr. M Harun uz Zaman :
Most historical accounts of the Bangla language movement usually start with the student protests in 1948 when Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding leader of Pakistan, declared that “Urdu and Urdu shall be the only state language of Pakistan.” But the movement started well before that arrogant pronouncement. This first phase of the movement started in 1947, right after the partition of India into two independent and sovereign countries, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
The first prominent Bengali to protest the adoption of Urdu as the only state language of Pakistan was Dr. Mohammad Shahidullah, an eminent linguist and scholar. In an article entitled “Amader Bhasha Shomoshya,” (Our language problem), published in the Daily Azad on August 6, 1947, he wrote, “it would be a retrograde step to copy the Congress in what it has done with regard to Hindi in India and make Urdu the only state language of Pakistan…..Urdu is not the mother tongue of any of the regions of Pakistan…there is no reason for not accepting Bangla as the national language of Pakistan” (Badruddin Umar, “Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti,” Vol. 1, Internet Archive, 2015, pp. 3-4). Shahidullah’s bold initiative on the language issue was soon followed by others. On September 15, 1947, Tamaddun Majlish, an Islamic cultural organization, issued a pamphlet titled “Pakistaner Rastrobhasha: Bangla na Urdu”? (“Pakistan’s State Language: Bangla or Urdu?”). The authors of the pamphlet were Dr. Quazi Motahar Hossain, Professor of Statistics at Dhaka University and well-known literary scholar, Abul Mansur Ahmad, a political stalwart of the Muslim League and famous writer, and Abul Quasem, Lecturer of Physics at Dhaka University and the founder and Secretary of Tamaddun Majlish. The pamphlet advocated for making Bangla the medium of instruction, the judicial language, and the official language of East Pakistan and one of the state languages of Pakistan (Badruddin Umar, “Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti,” Vol. 1, Internet Archive, 2015, p. 14).
In November 1947, the Pakistan National Education Conference in Karachi passed a resolution that proposed Urdu and English as two state languages of Pakistan. Further, the Pakistan Government published a list of approved subjects for the Central Superior Service (CSS) examination, used for selecting members of Pakistan’s central bureaucracy. The list included Urdu and English but excluded Bangla. Bangla was also excluded from currency notes and postal stamps. These blatant attempts to marginalize Bangla met with widespread public outrage in East Pakistan (as East Bengal was called at that time). Tamuddun Majlish held a rally on December 6, 1947, on the Dhaka University campus, presided over by Abul Quasem and addressed by student leaders that included Farid Ahmad, Munir Chowdhury, A.K.M. Ahsan and Kalyan Dasgupta. At the end of the meeting, Farid Ahmad, the Vice President of the Dhaka University Students Union (DUCSU) read out a resolution that called for making Bangla one of the state languages of Pakistan and the official language of East Pakistan (Badruddin Umar, “Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti,” Vol. 1, Internet Archive, 2015, pp. 19 – 21).
After the rally, the students marched on the streets of Dhaka and then congregated in front of the Secretariat Building. The gathering was addressed by Syed Mohammad Afzal, the Agriculture Minister who assured the students of his support for their demands. They later met with two other ministers, namely Nurul Amin and Hamidul Huq Chowdhury, both of whom pledged their support on the language issue. The students then attempted to meet with Khwaja Nazimuddin, the then Chief Minister of East Pakistan. Nazimuddin initially declined to see the students and the reason given was that he had taken ill. Upon the insistence of Farid Ahmad to still see him, Nazimuddin agreed to meet with only three students. Three students led by Farid Ahmad met Nazimuddin, and after a bout of altercations, the latter finally agreed to consider the students’ demands on the language issue (Badruddin Umar, “Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti,” Vol. 1, Internet Archive, 2015, pp. 19-21).
Farid Ahmad had to face the wrath of the government for playing a leading role in the first phase of the language movement. At that time, Ahmad was a final year law student at Dhaka University and concurrently serving as Lecturer of English at Dhaka College. Aziz Ahmed, a non-Bengali Chief Secretary of the Government of East Pakistan called Farid Ahmad into his office on January 6, 1948 and rebuked him for “getting involved in politics” while serving in a government job. A defiant twenty-four old Farid Ahmad told the senior bureaucrat that he was fully aware of the obligations of his job and had no regrets about what he had done. On January 8, 1948, Farid Ahmad resigned his Dhaka College position to protest the exclusion of Bangla from the CSS examination (Badruddin Umar, “Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolan O Tatkalin Rajniti,” Vol. 1, Internet Archive, 2015, 50).
Two later phases of the language movement took place in 1948 and 1952, which are much better known than the first phase, will not be discussed here. It is worth mentioning that the later phases of the movement were spearheaded by student leaders who received active support from a number of Bengali political leaders.
During the elections of 1954, both Abul Quasem and Farid Ahmad were elected to the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly. Farid Ahmad was later elected to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, which was entrusted to draft the first constitution of Pakistan. This assembly enacted the first constitution of Pakistan on February 29, 1956. Farid Ahmad was actively involved in the drafting of this constitution, which declared Bangla as one of the state languages. In 1961, Abul Quasem founded Bangla College, the first degree college to adopt Bangla as the medium of instruction. He also authored a number of books in science, mathematics, and other subjects in Bangla. To celebrate the constitutional recognition of Bangla as a state language of Pakistanin 1956, Farid Ahmad pleaded a case before the East Pakistan High Court entirely in Bangla.
For their contributions to the Bangla language movement, Abul Quasem was awarded the “Ekushe Padak” by the Government of Bangladesh in 1987 and Farid Ahmad was awarded the “Matribhasha Padak” by Tamuddun Majlish in 2002.
Every year, around the months of February and March, there is renewed interest among academics, politicians, and the intelligentsia for introducing Bangla in all spheres of our national life. It would be befitting on this occasion to remember Abul Quasem and Farid Ahmad, two of the leaders of the first phase of the language movement, who also took the first steps to make Bangla a medium of instruction and a language to be used in the courts of law.
(The writer is a nuclear engineer and a specialist in energyeconomics and policy).
