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News > World

International Mother Language Day: A Language Disappears Every 2 Weeks

  • A Bengali mural says

    A Bengali mural says "Immortal 21st" in context of Feb 21., 1952 when Bengalis gave their lives for the love of their language. | Photo: Facebook / @Lio Dip Mariners

Published 21 February 2019
Opinion

Feb. 21 is the International mother language day i.e., a day to celebrate mother language. However, UNESCO said that a language disappears every two weeks.

Feb. 21 is International Day for Mother Language. On Feb 21., 1952, scores of Bangladeshi (the then East Pakistan) gave their lives in a fight for the recognition of Bengali language.

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The then, East Pakistan (present Bangladesh), after being separated from India in 1947, was a territory of West Pakistan. Bengali speaking population of East Pakistan, soon came under attack by their western counterpart because Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Jinnah wanted Urdu to be the official language of both the Pakistani territories.

Bengalis of East Pakistan opposed this. They wanted their language to be recognized as well.

This started a long and bloody war of independence fuelled by linguistic nationalism. Gradually other issues also started piling up, like exploitation of East Pakistan’s natural resources by its western counterpart.  

The growing anger led to a call for a march on Feb. 21, 1952 by the students of Dhaka University, Bangladesh.

West Pakistan administration gave orders to the military to impose a curfew and if anybody dares to break the curfew, the military had orders to shoot and kill.

The students of the university broke the curfew and led a march against repressive West Pakistan leading to the death of countless young minds. This started a movement against the West Pakistan government. Their slogan was “Joy Bangla” (Victory of Bengali).

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After 19 years of a movement and a 9-month war, East Pakistanis won independence in 1971. The free country made Bengali the national language and called its country Bangladesh, a country for Bengalis.

To commemorate the language martyrs, in 1999, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared Feb. 21 as the day of mother language, i.e., the language one was born speaking.

The theme of UNESCO celebrations this year is 'Indigenous languages matter for development, peacebuilding, and reconciliation'.

However, amidst the 20th mother language day celebrations in 2019, the UNESCO came up with a data that every two weeks a language disappears in the world taking with it the cultural and intellectual history of an entire community.

According to the UNESCO, 43 percent of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken in the world are endangered. Any language that is spoken by less than 10,000 people is in danger.

“Only a few hundred languages have genuinely been given a place in education systems and the public domain, and less than a hundred are used in the digital world,” the UNESCO website said.

In India alone, around 600 languages are in danger. Ganesh Narayan Devy, a literary critic said that over 250 among 780 known languages in India have already disappeared in the last 60 years.

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