A.B.M. Razaul Karim Faquire, Ph.D :
Language policy is exercised to influence the structure, function, and acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. Hence, it causes to influence both the languages and language behavior of its speakers. Presently, the government of Bangladesh has no language policy to influence the language behaviours and the languages used in Bangladesh. In the past, the region, now known as Bangladesh, has undergone language policy mostly in an informal manner throughout its political history. The language policy which Bangladesh experienced in three different periods- pre-Pakistan period, Pakistan period and Bangladesh period- is depicted below.
During the pre-Pakistan period, the language policy was a matter of royal decree; it was not formulated to reflect the wish of common people. Therefore, all the Governments of that period used to allocate a status that gave preeminence to a particular variety of language over other variety of languages. Hence, it gave status to the speech variety of the aristocrats by ignoring varieties spoken by the common people in this land. As a part of these language policies, the languages which were accepted as languages of status in this region until the British period include Sanskrit, Prakrit (popularly known as Pali), Persian and English, three of which now have been recognized as classical languages. Throughout this period, though some particular languages-languages of the political elites- were assigned status, the corpus planning would naturally occur in the hand of the literary scholars. The corpus of a particular language would develop through the writing of literature. For example, the corpus of Prakrit was developed through the writing and compilation of the Tripithaka, which is exclusively the result of the efforts of the Buddhist scholars. Similarly, the corpus of middle Bangla evolved through the writing of Mangla Kavya’s, e.g. Srikrishnakirtan. In the same way, the corpus of the standard Bangla evolved by the efforts of writing and compiling literary works in Bangla throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
After the repatriation of the British, language policy became the concern of all the post- colonial states including erstwhile united (East and West) Pakistan in South Asia. In erstwhile Pakistan, the language policy was undertaken inspired by the spirit of desperate nationalism, the main aim of which was to allocate Urdu as the national language at the expense of other languages. By this language policy, the Government of Pakistan ignored the other languages spoken in the provinces, including Purbo Bangla, Balochistan, Punjab, Sindh and North-West Frontier Province. The effects of this policy have manifested in the language situation of present day Pakistan. A case in point is Punjabi-though it is the mother tongue of about 50 per cent of the citizens of Pakistan but is not taught as a subject at school level.
The present day Bangladesh has no explicit national language policy. It is, however, implicit that Bangladesh has some kind of mechanism which compensates for an actual language policy. At the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the country commenced a status planning, under which the Government of Bangladesh allocated an interim status to the Promito Bangla. The Promito Bangla is a variety of Bangla which was developed by the cultural elites at the center of Bengali Renaissance, i.e. Kolkata during the period from the late 19th century to early 20th centuries. Since the independence of Bangladesh, no measure of corpus planning has been undertaken, though a kind of acquisition planning is in practice for which all the people including the minority speech communities, e.g. the Garo and the Santali inhabiting Bangladesh require to receive education through the media of Bangla. This implicit practice of acquisition planning also allows the people in Bangladesh to receive education through the medium of English.
Hence, the above discussion on the language policy in three different eras-pre-Pakistan period, Pakistan period and Bangladesh period- shows that though Bangla has been a language of common people and developed in the hands of literary scholars, it took centuries to become a language of status. Though Bangla has been given a status under an official decision it did not gain preeminence over English. Hence language policy has never been initiated in favour of Bangla. Nevertheless, the present language situation that exists in Bangladesh demands a language policy to be undertaken so that Bangla receives preeminence over the foreign and domestic languages, e.g. English.
(The writer is professor of Institute of Modern Languages, University of Dhaka)
