WEST PAKISTAN PERCEPTIONS OF THE BENGALI LANGUAGE MOVEMENT WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO THE QUAID-I-AZAM
In 1948 and 1952 a number of
urban Bengalis---mostly students, intellectuals and educated people---demanded
that their language, Bengali, should be a national language of Pakistan and
should also be used in public domains. This movement, called the Bengali
Language Movement or Bhasha Ondolan, was
politically significant because it was a reaction to the perceived domination
and injustice of West Pakistani decision-makers towards the people of East
Bengal. However, the Muslim League in particular and West Pakistanis in
general, saw it as a conspiracy of communists, Indian agents and enemies of
Pakistan to destabilise the new state. Among the few West Pakistanis who saw it
as a spontaneous response to West Pakistani hegemony were ethno-nationalist
leaders who were themselves regarded as anti-state forces by West Pakistani
establishment figures.
In a book published by the National Language Authority
Islamabad in 1992 Gilani Kamran makes the following observation:
Giving it [Bengali] the status of a
national language; making it a national language; were in no way fair or
justifiable steps. The advocacy of Bengali was only to make it and the
Devanagari script the rivals of the national language Urdu so that the creation
and strengthening of nationalism would be impeded1.
Bengali language movement (Bhasha Ondolan) first started. It was,
in fact, the dominant view of the West Pakistani establishment---the
bureaucracy, armed forces, most politicians from the Punjab, their allies from
the other provinces and most of Pakistani intellectuals---from 1948 till 1954
and was repeated by many people even after the emergence of Bangladesh. Thus Syed
Mustafa Ali Barelvi and Syed Abdullah, both strong supporters of Urdu and
Pakistani nationalism, repeat this view2 and it is repeated ad nauseam by right wing Urdu dailies
such as Nawa-i-Waqt every now and
then.
This view is based upon a conspiracy theory: that certain
forces---Hindus, communists, anti-government or anti-state agents---created the
Bhasha Ondolan in order to
destabilise Pakistan. it is also supported by another view of ethnicity which
may be called a ‘primordialist’ view albeit a crude version of it. According to
this theory all ethnic revival movements in Pakistan are survivals from the
past; they are merely selfish, old fashioned prejudices which will go away as
we get modernized and nationalism replaces ‘provincialism’---provincialism, incidentally,
is the term used for ethnicity or ethno-nationalism in Pakistan3.
This paper focuses on the perceptions of an articulate
section of West Pakistanis of the Bhasha
Ondolan. They were the ones which had, and continue to have, the widest
circulation among the reading public in Pakistan. They state-sponsored media
programmes and were discussed among members of the public in most of the major
cities of the country. The views of socialists and ethno-nationalists will also
be mentioned but they were marginalised or viewed with scepticism and suspicion
during the Ondolan itself and till
quite recently. As such, the views we are mostly concerned with are those of
the West Pakistani establishment.
Before taking up the views of West Pakistan, however, let
us briefly recapitulate the major events of the Bhasha Ondolan4.
The Tamuddun Majlis, a private social organisation,
demanded Bengali as the language of instruction, administration and means of
communication in East Bengal as early as September 1947, only a month after
Pakistan was established. However, it was ignored till the December of that
year when it was feared that Urdu alone would be the language of the State5.
The language movement started off in earnest in 1948 when Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
or Quaid-i-Azam (the Great Leader) as he is called, declared on 19 and 21 March
1948 that the State Language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other
Language6. Mr. Jinnah made that statement on the assumption that one
language unites a new nation and that nobody, except anti-Pakistan agitators,
were against Urdu. Why he came to believe such conspiracy theories can only be
conjectured but in another section of this article evidence that he was
presented with anti-Bengali material will be pointed to. Later, in 1952, Khwaja
Nazimuddin, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, repeated these sentiments in
Dhaka7. After this the language movement really gathered momentum.
The students of Dhaka University were the leaders of the movement and there used
to be processions in favour of Bengali every day. On 21 February 1952 the
police fired on the students who had decided to defy Section 144 by coming out
of the University in batches of four and five. As a result of this firing,
according to the police report, there were nine casualities of whom three were
students and six outsieres8. This day, called Ekushe, became a significant symbol of Bengali defiance of the West
Pakistani ruling elite and evokes strong sentiments even today. The language
movement appeared to come to an end in 1954 when Bengali was accepted as one of
the national languages, the other being Urdu, by the Constituent Assembly9.
However, the sentiments it had created lingered on and formed the basis of
Bengali nationalism which created Bangladesh in 1971. In this sense, then the
Bengali language movement remains crucial for the understanding of
identity-formation, ethnicity, nationalism and the clash of the elites and
proto-elites in multilingual aspiring nation states. However, what we shall be
concerned with in this paper is reality-construction---the way different actors
build up their version of reality of which they become prisoners however
misleading it may be.
The leaders of the Muslim League which ruled Pakistan
from 1947 till 1954, the years of the Ondolan,
already had an ideological commitment to Urdu because it had become a mark of
Muslim identity in India even in the late eighteenth century10.
During the Hindi-Urdu controversy (1860-1947), Urdu had become a subsidiary
symbol (the first being Islam) of Muslim identity and so contributed to the
Pakistan Movement11. In the same way Hindi in the Devanagari script
had become symbol of the Hindu identity and this congruence of symbols, as
Christopher King calls it, 12 had become a powerful emotional force
which continued to influence the way the leaders of the Muslim League in
Pakistan saw reality. Apart from the politicians, the bureaucracy was dominated
by Punjabis and Mohajirs from India who held a hierarchical view of languages
in which English came on the top and Urdu came second while the other languages
of Pakistan were dismissed as crude dialects. Apart form the political
objectives of the Punjabi (and Mohajir) elite, educated Punjabis had a long
standing relationship with Urdu. Indeed, it became the second language of
educated Punjabis after the British recognized it as the vernacular of the
literary writing but even for personal communication. Not only did the Punjabi
Muslims not object to Urdu but during the Hindi-Urdu controversy days they
owned it even to the exclusion of their mother tongue, Punjabi. Indeed, the
report of the Education Commission of 1882 makes it clear that the Punjabi
Muslims identified with Urdu, Punjabi Hindus with Hindi and only the Sikhs with
Punjabi14.
This is why Sheikh Zahur Ahmed got away with the
following insulting statement about Punjabi in the December 1910 session of the
Muslim League:
Delhi, the home of Urdu, is in the
province of the Punjab and it would be a very sad day, indeed, if the
birth-place of Mir, Ghalib and Zauq should be vulgarized by the Babylonish
jargon, by courtesy called Punjabi15.
Not surprisingly, the
Punjabi Muslims did not protest. This could, however, be explained on the
theory that in 1910 the Muslim League identified with Urdu for political
reasons and protest would have been counterproductive. However, even now the
activists of the Punjabi language movement complain that the Punjabi middle
class despises their language 16 and a survey of students, attitudes
towards it in Lahore suggests that they hold it in affectionate contempt17.
In the census of 1998, some middle class Punjabis gave their mother tongue as
Urdu according to newspaper reports and Fakhar Zaman, an activist of the
Punjabi language movement18.
Thus, Urdu already held a higher place in the esteem of
most of the decision-makers in Pakistan than Bengali. Moreover, Urdu was also
in the political interest of these decision-makers. They wanted a strong, unified
Pakistan and felt---as the quote from Gilani Kamran illustrated---that one
language could guarantee that whereas more than one would split Pakistan along
ethnic lines. Thus, while the ruling elite itself kept using English, it used
the symbol of Islam and Urdu for national integration.
The construction of reality also seems to involve
egogratification and rationalistion of privilege as if it were a natural right.
Thus, whether they were conscious about it or not, the use of Urdu was actually
in the interest of the ruling elite. In the case of Punjabi, Shafqat Tanvir
Mirza argues, that it is given less rights than the other ethnic languages so
as to impress upon their supporters that the sacrifice of one’s mother tongue,
which only the Punjabi gives so willingly, is the real criterion of Pakistani
nationalism. However, the real reason is that Urdu extends the power base of
the Punjabi ruling elite which can then rule over all the other provinces in
the name of Pakistani nationalism19. I am not arguing that the
ruling elite actually decides that it will extend its power base or exploit
other provinces through such a policy. Some crucial decision makers may,
indeed, make decisions consciously in their interest as a group. Most other
people, especially intellectuals and hangers-on, are not consciously aware of
these aspects of policies. They believe in them because they believe sincerely
in the rationalising myths upon which they are based: nationalism, patriotism,
efficiency, modernisation and so on.
Thus without suggesting that most West Pakistanis who
held the anti-Bhasha Ondolan views
expressed below were cynically in favour of exploiting Bengalis and oppressing
them, I will outline the views below. Basically, as mentioned earlier, the
views are part of belief in a conspiracy theory: that external agents were
powerful enough to create a movement as powerful as the Bengali language
movement. The views are as follows:
The 1948 Bhasha
Ondolan was triggered off when Dhirendranath Datta, a Hindu member of the
Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, raised the question that Bengali should be
used in the Assembly. To this Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister, replied:
Pakistan has been created because of a hundred million Muslims in this subcontinent and the language of a hundred million Muslims is Urdu20.
This statement denied that the Muslims of South Asia had any other language but Urdu. Such a statement would not have been disputed in the Urdu-Hindi controversy days (as, indeed, such statements against Punjabi were not), but ‘now it hurt the Bengalis whose protest took on intensity because of the contempt with which their language, and so they themselves, had been dismissed. This link with Islam was, indeed a part of the thinking of many Pakistanis. In 1953, Syed Aalman Nadwi, a famous religious leader, said in the Third Pakistan Historical Conference that Bengali was saturated with Hindu traditions and culture and it should be Muslimised.21 Indeed, the state did try to Muslimise Bengali from 1948 onwards. There were suggestions indigenous words, replacing them with Perso-Arabic ones22. The East Bengal Government set up a Language Committee on 07 December 1950. Its chairperson. Maulana Akram Khan (a famous Bengali Muslim leader), also declared in Karachi on 15 April 1951 that those who opposed Urdu were antagonistic to Islam 23. The Committee recommended the exclusion of Sanskrit words and the teaching of Urdu as a second language 24. However, the students of the Bengali Department of Dhaka University, among others, declared that they would not allow the script of their language to be changed as they would alienate them from cultural heritage25. Apprehensions of such change were also expressed in the Legislative Assembly26 as, indeed, they had been even earlier27.
During the language movement of 1952 the West Pakistan press, both in English and Urdu, carried articles, editorials and letters against the movement28. In most of these writings, Communists, Hindus and anti-Islamic forces were held to be responsible for the movement. The Hindu influence was supposed to come from school teachers, journalists, student leaders and members of the legislature. This influence was called the Calcutta School or the Dabistan-e-Kulkutta in Urdu. Thus, Syed Abdullah, one of the foremost compiracy theorists of Pakistan, writes that after the departure of Khwaja Nazimuddin ‘those forces became more powerful which I call the Calcutta School (Dabistan-e-Kulkutta)’29. However, a secret document entitled ‘Note for Governors’ Conference’ of the Ministry of Home Affairs, dated 1958, reported that India had not done anything concrete lately at the higher official level to make East Pakistan secede from West Pakistan30.
The View of Communist Manipulation
Another variant of this theory was that the communists had created the language movement. As many teachers were believed to be Hindus as well as communists31 some people in Pakistan even now believe in this theory. At that time almost everybody, except the ethno-nationalists who were themselves leftists, believed in it. The Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu actively disseminated this theory. Abdul Haq, its major intellectual figure, declared that the Bhasha Ondolan was inspired by a few self-seeking gentlemen. Another gentleman, arguing in a similar view, called them “traitors to Islam and enemies of our nation”32. The Calcutta based newspaper Swadihinta too claimed that the movement was organised and turned into a mass movement by communists (11 March 1952 issue). However, other studies show that the Communist Party was in an embattled position33 and did not initially play an active role in the Bhasha Ondolan. Indeed, according to Ayesha Jalal, who quotes confidential reports from the Central Intelligence Department of the USA, there were ‘no important communists by July 1951 at large in Pakistan and that any threats from the organization ha [d] ceased for an indefinite period34. However, the Action Committee of the Bhasha Ondolan had four communist (Youth League) members out of twelve35 in 1951 and communists were sympathetic to it. It should, however, be emphasised that the communists could not have had any success if the people had not felt deprived for other reasons.
The View of
State Destabilisation
Whether Hindus or Communists (or both), the West Pakistani elite was unanimous in its opinion that the purpose of the Bhasha Ondolan was to destabilise the government and to break up Pakistan. This view was expressed repeatedly by the press and is expressed even now though no longer by informed people. After the firing on 21 February 1952 this view was expressed by Nurul Amin in the Provincial Legislature on 24 March 1952. He asserted vehemently and emphatically that the Ondolan was an attempt to overthrow the government and deal a blow at the very security of Pakistan36. Even later when the ruling elite itself had accepted Bengali as one of the languages of the state, many Pakistan nationalists kept protesting against this decision. Thus Abdul Haq kept insisting that only Urdu could be the ‘national and state language of Pakistan’37. Indeed, as mentioned in the beginning of this paper, even now there are many people who believe that it was the recognition of Bengali as a state language and not its suppression or other factors which led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Anti-Bengali
Views and Jinnah’s Decision
When M.A Jinnah visited Dhaka in March 1948 he was presented with letters, petitions, memoranda and other documents asserting the Hindu link without, however, offering any proof. Most of these are preserved in a file available in several archives in Pakistan to which this writer has had access. The file lists several petitions in favour of Urdu while those in favour of Bengali are dismissed as the work of anti-state agitators38.
The Bengal Muslims Students League, appreciating his action, wrote to him that fifth columnists, such as Abdur Rahman Choudhary and Mohammad Toha (leaders of the Bhasha Ondolan), would co-operate with the communists and Hindus to uproot train lines and blow off telegraph lines in East Bengal39. The Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam of Chittagong, in an address of Welcome to Jinnah, also blamed a ‘foreign hand’ for the language agitation and recommended that the Urdu high schools be opened and madrassa students be given military training 40. Indeed most of the petitions which were presented to Mr. Jinnah were against the language movement. Members of the joint State Language Committee of Action were, however, allowed to meet him but with the remarks that tey were persons responsible for recent language agitation41.
Evidence supporting Bengali---indeed the writings in the Bengali press, the English daily Pakistan Observer and other sheer numbers in the procession in support of Bengali---was not pointed out to him. Moreover, Mr. Jinnah, like other people from West Pakistan, must have read more about the movement in the West Pakistan conspiracy. Thus, it is not surprising that he perceived the situation in the same terms as other West Pakistanis. Thus, he believed ‘that the noise was being created by a bunch of rabble rousers’42. That is probably why he took a firm stand against it in his speeches of 19 and 21 March 1948 and told the delegation of students who met him that the eight-point agreement they had reached with Khawaja Nazimuddin earlier had been signed under duress. Like others he too believed that one language would unite and more than one divide the country. Even supporters of the Bhasha Ondolan, like Tajuddin Ahmad and Badruddin Umar suggest that he held his belief sincerely though they do not agree with him43. But whatever the sincerity of Jinnah and other Pakistanis the fact remains that such erroneous views about reality did have negative consequences. This particular rigid view, for instance, made it impossible for Pakistanis to understand the grievances of East Pakistanis and give them just and equal treatment. Thus, upto 1971 East Pakistanis complained, and justly, of being exploited economically44 and despised culturally. And very often the arguments would reiterate the conspiracy theories held by West Pakistanis and contested with anger and mortification by the East Pakistanis45.
The Views of
Ethno-Nationalists
The period from 1948 to 1955 was crucial not only for the development of Bengali ethnicity but also for ethnic mobilisation in the North West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan46. In the Frontier the Pashto-speaking people were mobilised by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan with Pashto as a symbol of identity while in Sindh the Sindhi language was used in the same symbolic manner by G.M Syed and others, In Balochistan, however, Baloch ethnicity was expressed militantly from the very beginning though balochi did have a subsidiary role in its expression too47. Thus ethnic leaders and their supporters did not oppose the Bengali language movement nor did they support the hegemony of the Centre over any of the non-Punjabi provinces of Pakistan.
The ethnicists in the Western wing too were equated with socialism. However, in March 1951 Major General Akbar Khan was arrested in what is known as the ‘Conspiracy’ case. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the famous leftist poet and journalist, was arrested with him. And this arrest, says Ayesha Jalal, gave the central intelligence department an excuse to hound and hunt down prominent writers, trade unionists and members of the Mazdoor-Kisan and Communist parties of Pakistan48. Thus the communists were not strong enough to express themselves openly and strongly on the subject of the Bhasha Ondolan in West Pakistan. However, the ethnic parties which were permeated by some of their ideas, opposed the domination of the Centre in common with the supporters of Bengali in East Bengal.
In February 1952 Khan Ghaffar was in jail but when he was released he addressed the Pakistan Parliament on 20 March 1954 as follows:
The masses were ruthlessly persecuted and oppressed. Their needs were overlooked and they were subjected to extreme hardships and oppression. The cumulative effect of all these factors was that the Muslim League could secure no more than a nine percent of the seats in provincial elections…
About the fear of the separation of East Pakistan he remarked:
…We have detected in certain influential quarters of West Pakistan an undertone of discord which smacks of a separatist move and seems to be designed to rend asunder the two wings of Pakistan. The reading of the situation is confirmed by the demonstrations held in Karachi on the language issue, the slogans raised on the occasion, the malicious propaganda campaign persistently maintained in the Karachi press and the speeches delivered to creates bad blood between the Bengalis and non-Bengalis50.
In 1947 G.M Syed formed the Sind Progressive Party which was also in favour of ‘Provincial autonomy within a socialist framework’51. In Balochistan the national Kalat State National Party was banned by the Centre and its aim too was the formation of ‘Greater Balochistan’52. In the N.W.F.P Khan Ghaffar’s Khudai Khidmatgar organisation was banned in 1948 but he formed the Peoples’ Party in 1948. Its avowed aim was to create a union of socialist republics’ with full autonomy for all the republics within Pakistan. All the ethnic parties from Pakistan, including those of East Bengal, merged themselves into the National Awami Party (NAP) in 1957 53.
By this time, however, Bengali was a national language if only in name. After this, although the ethno-nationalists of the West wing condemned the Punjabi-dominated ruling elite, they did not defend the Bengali language. Indeed, their major struggle now was to get their languages---which were called ‘regional languages’---recognised as national languages. The report on national education, published in 1959, reduced the importance of Sindhi while Bengali was given lip service in it as a national language 54. In 1969 when Air Marshal Nur Khan circulated proposals for a new educational policy, Urdu was supposed to be the official language in the Western wing while Bengali would enjoy the same status in East Pakistan 55. While the ethnonationalists kept quiet about the status of Bengali they opposed Urdu vehemently. The Jeay Sindh Naujavan Mahaz proposed that all the ‘recognized mother tongues of Pakistani people, including Bengali and Urdu, should be declared as national language’56. The Punjab Adabi Sangat proposed that Punjabi, rather than Urdu alone be adopted as a medium of instruction at the primary level57. On the whole, though, the ethno-nationalists of West Pakistan rejected the conspiracy theories of the establishment and maintained that the Bengali language movement was a reaction to the hegemony of the ruling elite and should not have been suppressed in the first place.
Theoretical Synthesis
While the minds of the West Pakistani establishment were closed because of the reality they had constructed, those of the activists of the Bhasha Ondolan, and other East Bengalis, were closed too. In the West Pakistani version of reality the ethnic Bengalis were either traitors to the state or Islam (being Indian or communist agents) or their gullible dupes. In the Bengali view the West Pakistanis were aware that they were denying them their rights and therefore, in their version of reality, the West Pakistanis were oppressors and exploiters. The behaviour of arrogant civil and military officers confirmed their beliefs and added insult to injury. In short then, both the West and East Pakistanis generally explained the conflict between the two wings on the basis of conspiracy theories---the former that some Bengalis wanted to break away from Pakistan and had fooled the others to support them; the latter that the Punjabis and Mohajirs had decided to humiliate and exploit East Bengal and would always deny them their rights.
As I have mentioned earlier, reality is much more complex and the actual motivations of the participants of events such as the Bhasha Ondolan are difficult to determine though its consequences can be determined more easily. Among these determinable consequences, or possible outcomes or effects, it could be argued that some of the charges of the conspiracy theorists were true. For instance it is true that West Pakistanis did hold much more power and took far more money out of export earnings in united Pakistan than they had a right to58. To a lesser extent it is also true that ethnic politicians and intellectuals were left-leaning and, in some cases, some of them did receive aid from foreign powers59. However, as already mentioned, the aid was very less and movements spread only when people felt aggrieved, dissatisfied and exploited. So, ethnic movements cannot be explained by crude versions of ‘Primordialist’ theories such as that of the so-called ‘provincialism’ which is said to be a legacy of the past in Pakistan. I believe the explanation for the Bhasha Ondolan must be sought in the instrumentalist theories of ethnicity in combination with a variant of the primordialist theory which may be called the theory of extra-rational motivation. A number of scholars have, indeed, argued that instrumental reasons: the desire for power, jobs, goods and services commensurate with their greater numbers in Pakistan---led to the mobilisation of East Bengalis in the name of the Bengali language60.
While I agree with this instrumental explanation. I would like to add that the actors in the Bhasha Ondolan were motivated by extra-rational (or emotional) factors too. This rationalist framework must then be modified because if we want to understand the mental reality of the participants of the Bhasha Ondolan we will have to take extra-rational factors into account. We need not call them ‘primordial’ in the sense that they have been present from time immemorial61. But they do share the quality of being extra-rational---not susceptible to neat calculations of material loss and gain---with primordialist sentiments. What the activists of the Bhasha Ondolan (and other participants of mass movements) have in mind are not immediate rationalist aspirations for merely jobs, goods and services. These may form part of the myths of deprivation which they believe in but what motivates them, what brings them to a high pitch of emotion, is a sense of injustice. In this sense, then, they act to redress perceived injustice; to assert their human dignity; to strike a blow against oppression in the abstract. Such motivations are predominantly emotional, extra-rational and, therefore, not susceptible to precise calculations along rationalist lines.
When language or religion are the symbols of ethnic mobilisation, the extra-rational element is present even in the choice of these symbols. While it is true that pre-modern communities had local loyalties and kinship ties and very often language was not part of their symbols of consolidation, 62 it is also true that language, being the repository of an ancient, real or imagined heritage, is an obvious symbol of continuity and unity. This symbol is as salient for the elites as it is for the masses and easily becomes a major, or one of the major, markers of identity. Thus elites do not choose to manipulate language as a symbol of mobilization in a calculating, rationalist way. To imagine this would be a kind of conspiracy theory. What can be suggested is that language, being a potential marker of identity, becomes salient in the imagination of the elite of a group as well as its members during certain external conditions63. These conditions go by the name of modernity which, in the case of South Asia, was brought in by the colonial rule of the British. Thus, as the state monopoly over jobs and power increased, pressure groups had to be formed to take a quota of these goods. And as increased communication and the advent of print made it possible to imagine a large community speaking the same language64, it became possible for movements like the Bengali language movement to take place. These movements, then, are rationalist (instrumental) insofar as they are responses to domination and underdevelopment by ruling elites. They are extra-rational (but not primoridalist in the strict interpretation of that term) in the sense that people struggle not only for jobs, goods and services but for intangibles like their identity, their way of life, their pride and the idea of putting an end to perceived injustice.
West Pakistani perceptions about the Bhasha Ondolan, at least those of the establishment, included both the rational and the extra-rational motivations: the rational because they did not believe that East Bengalis were being unjustly treated and deserved a greater share than they themselves of Pakistan’s resources and power in the country; the extra-rational because they failed to understand the sense of outrage, the feeling of humiliation, which the denial of Bengali produced in East Bengal.
Conclusion
To conclude, the dominant perception of the Bengali language movement in West Pakistan was that it was created by Hindus, communists and anti-state elements. Allied to this was the primordialist view that ethnicity, or provincialism as it was called, was a remnant of the past and would go away as modernisation took place and Pakistani nationalism took stronger roots. For this to happen, the establishment felt that language based ethnicity must be suppressed. While this was the dominant view in West Pakistan, the ethno-nationalists and leftist intellectuals supported ethnicity in general and saw the Bhasha Ondolan as a response to West Pakistani dominance and misrule. This view was expressed in the context of ethnic politics which was seen as being anti-state in Pakistan till quite recently. It is only recently that ethno-nationalism has been analysed by political scientists65, historians 66 and politico-linguists67. That West Pakistani perceptions of the Bengali language movement are changing now owes much to these recent works.
Acknowledgements
I thank Professor Riaz Ahmad, the Quaid-i-Azam Professor at the Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad who kindly gave me the file containing the petitions, lists of interviewers, addresses of welcome and letters to M.A. Jinnah during his visit to East Bengal in March 1948. I also thank Dr. Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (Islamabad), for allowing me to use the facilities of the Institute in connection with this study.
NOTES AND
REFERENCES
1. Gilani Kamran, Qaumiat Ki Tashkeel aur urdu Zaban [Urdu: The Creation of a Nation and Language] (Islamabad: national Language Authority, 1994), 148.
2. S.M.A Barelvi, ‘Suba-e-Sind Ki Taleemi Halat aur Hamare Masail 1852-1985’. [Urdu: The Educational Condition of the Province of Sind and our Problems’, Unpublished Report, Typescript, 1987, p. 20. Punjab Public Library. Syed Abdullah, Pakistan Mein Urdu KaMasla [Urdu: The Problem of Urdu in Pakistan] (Lahore: Maktaba khayaban-e-Adab, 1976), 45.
3. Fro theories of ethnicity see John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds). Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
4. For details see Badruddin Umar, Purba banglar Bhasha Ondolan-o-Tatkalin Rajniti: Vol. 1 [Bengali: Language Movement of East bengal and Contemporary Politics of the Time] Dhaka: Mowla Brothers, 1970. Also see bashir al helal, Bhasha Ondolaner Ittihash: 3 Vols. [Bengali: The History of Language Movement] (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 1985).
5. Morning News (Dhaka), 6 December 1947.
6. M.A. Jinnah, ‘Speech at a Public Meeting at Dacca’. In Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947-48 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Information and broadcasting, 1998), 183.
7. Pakistan Observer, 29 January 1952.
8. Report of the Enquiry into the Firing by the Police at Dacca on 21 February 1952 (by Justice Ellis). Quoted in Umar Purba Bangla, 32 & 48.
9. Dawn, 08 May 1954.
10. Amrit Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi (Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1984).
11. Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press. 1996), 59-78.
12. Christopher King, One Language. Two Scripts (Bombay: Oxford University Press).
13. Nazir A. Chaudhry, Development of Urdu as Official Language in the Punjab 1848-1974 (Lahore: Government of the Punjab).
14. Report of the Punjab Provincial Committee with Evidence Taken before the Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, (1884), 209-210 & 457-602.
15. Sharifuddin Pirzada (ed), Foundation of Pakistan: All-India Muslim League Documents 1906-1924, Vol. 1 (Karachi: National Publishing House, 1969), 196.
16. Saeed F. Kammi, Punjabi Zaban Naheen Maray Gi [Urud: The Punjabi Language Will Not Die] (Jhelum: Majida Maktab, 1988).
17. Sabiha Mansoor, Punhabi. Urdu. English in Pakistan: A Sociolinguistic Study, (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1993), 119.
18. Personal Communication, 07 March, 1998.
19. Shafqat Tanwir Mirza, ‘Pakistan Which Man Boli Laher’ [Punjabi: The renewed Demand for the use of the Mother tongue in Pakistan] Interview by Maqsood Saqib in Maan Boli (January), 833-896.
20. Legislative Assembly Debates: Pakistan-P (25 Feb. 1948), 16.
21. Quoted from Abdullah, Pakistan Mein, 45.
22. Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics, 88.
23. Pakistan Observer, 18 April 1951.
24. LAD-P (31 Oct. 1951), 25 and Rafique Islam, ‘The Language Movement’ in S.R. Chakravarty and V. Narain (eds), Bangladesh History and Culture, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1986), 147-161.
25. B. Umar, Purba Banglar Bhasha, 204-260.
26. LAD-B (01 March 1951), 61.
27. Pakistan Observer, Several issues of April 1994.
28. Editorials of D 23 Feb. 1952; Civil and Military Gazette 25 and 29 Feb. 1952 etc.
29. S. Abdullah, Pakistan Mein, 35.
30. History of Bangladesh War of Independence: Vol. 2 (Dhaka: Government of Bangladesh, Ministry of Information, 1982), 36. [Henceforth HBWI with volume. Number].
31. Marcus F. Franda, ‘Communism and Regional Politics in East Pakistan, Asian Survey (May), 588-606.
32. Abdul Haq, Pre-eminence of Urdu as Appraised by Several Distinguished Public men of East Bengal (Karachi: Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu, 1952), 37
33. M.F. Franda, ‘op. cit.
34. Ayesha Jalal. The State of Martial Rule in Pakistan (Cambridge, 1990. This edition. Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991), 123.
35. Talukdar Muniruzzaman, Radical Politics and the Emergence of Bangladesh. In Paul Brass and Marcus F. Franda (eds), Radical Politics in South Asia (Cambridge, Mass & London: MIT Press, 1973), 229.
36. Legislative Assembly Debates: Bengal (24 March 1952), 11.
37. Dawn, 11 May 1954.
38. ‘Address of welcome, representations and deputations received, and interviews granted by the Quaid-i-Azam during his tour of East Bengal in March, 1948’. File No. f. 216/11/GG/47. Located in the Archive of the Chair on Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
39. Address of welcome to the Quaid-i-Azam by the Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam, Chittagong. In Ibid.
40. Ibid
41. Ibid
42. Ataur Rahman, ‘The Language Movement and Bengali Nationalism’ In Rafiuddin Ahmad (ed) Religion, Nationalism and Politics in Bangladesh (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1990), 171.
43. Tajuddin Ahmad ‘Diary’, Handwritten entries reproduced in Badruddin Umar, Bhasha Ondolan Prasanga: Katipay Dolil, Vol-1 (Bengali/English: The Language Movements: Some Documents) (Chaka: Banla Academy, 1984), 112-113.
44. Rounaq
Jahan, Pakistan:Failure in National
Integration (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1972).
45. See Ataur Rahman’s acount of his argument with a senior West Pakistani bureaucrat in his memoir Zaratir dui Bochor (Bengali: Two years of My Ministership) (Dhaka: 1960s. Edition used, 1984), 108-111.
46. Tahir Amin, Ethno-National Movements of Pakistan (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1988).
47. Tariq Rahman, ‘The Pashto Language Movement and Identity formation in Pakistan’, Contemporary South Asia 4:2 (July), 151-170; ‘Language and Politics in a Pakistan Province: The Sindhi Language Movement’, Asian Survey 35:11 (November), 1005-1016 and ‘The Balochi/Brahvi Language Movements in Pakistan, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 19:3 (Spring), 71-88.
48. Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, 123.
49. Ibid., 123.
50. D.G Tendulkar, Abdul Ghaffar Khan: Faith is a Battle (Bombay: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1967), 840.
51. Tahir Amin, Ethno-national Movements, 92.
52. Zahoor Ahmad, ‘Balochistan Par Kya Guzri’, (Urdu: What was suffered by Balochistan) Weekly Zindagi (Lahore) (6 July), 11-19.
53. Tahir Amin. Ethno-national Movement. 89.
54. Report of the National Education commission (Karachi: Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Education, 1959), 284.
55. Proposals for a New Educational Policy (Islamabad: Ministry of Education and Scientific Research. 1969), 3-4.
56. M. Yousuf Talpur, A Memorandum of Proposals for a New Educational Policy and Sindhi Language Hyderabad: Jeay Sind Naujawan Mahaz, 1969.
57. Memorandum on Punjabi (Privately printed, 1969).
58. Rounaq Jahan, op. cit.
59. For External help to the Sindhi and Pashto ethnic leaders see Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics, 120 & 144.
60. Apart from the Bengali publications given earlier see Shamsul Alam, ‘Language as Political Articulation: East Bengal in 1952’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 21: 4 (1991), 469-487.
61. See the writings of Edward Shils, Clifford Geertz and others in John Hutchinson and Anthory D. Smith (eds), Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
62. See the extracts from Paul R. Brass, Michael Hechter and Anthony D. Smith in ibid.
63. Quentin Skinner, ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’, Political Theory 2:3 (August), 277-303.
64. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread and Nationalism (First Published 1983. This edition. London: Verso, 1991).
65. Tahir Amin, Ethno-national Movements, 1988.
66. Hasan Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
67. Tariq Rahman, Language and Politics.