'We, the students of Dacca University…'

Fury was in the air. The report of the Basic Principles Committee in 1952 in the new state of Pakistan, in consequence, seemed to inject fresh new energy into the movement for Bangla.

The progressive political classes clearly felt the need to sustain the struggle. However, it was the students of Dhaka University who underscored the significance of the movement through their concerted action in defence of the mother tongue.

In April 1951, a group of students with leftist political leanings – and they were all members of the Dhaka University State Language Committee of Action – prepared a letter arguing for Bangla as a state language. Copies of the letter were sent to all members of the constituent assembly then meeting in Karachi. Excerpts from the letter, reproduced below, demonstrate the increasingly radical nature of the movement:

"We, the students of Dacca University, who initiated the language movement in East Pakistan three years ago (and) who are now more determined than ever to secure for Bengali the status of state language of Pakistan, will take this opportunity, while you are assembled at Karachi, to press once more our legitimate claim…

We refuse to believe that any language under heaven can be Islamic or Christian or heathen. If Urdu is Islamic, Bengali is equally so. Nay, it is more Islamic as a large number of Muslims speak Bangla…"

The letter went on to serve warning that the adoption of Urdu as the language of the state would give rise to a privileged class in the country, with very negative consequences for the majority of the population. Such a move, it was pointed out in the letter, would "strike at the root of national integrity without which there is no future for our country".

The closing words of the letter were to be noted for their forcefulness:

"We have given a tough fight and are prepared to fight to the last. We shall never accept Urdu as the only state language. We are sworn to expose the great conspiracy which aims at reducing East Pakistan to the state of a colony. We remind the people's representatives that until and unless the claim of Bengali is fully established in the province as well as the centre, the students of Dacca University shall not rest."

Nurul Amin unhappy with Nazimuddin

Pakistan's first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated while addressing a public meeting in Rawalpindi on 16 October 1951. His assassin was swiftly pounced upon by a mob and killed on the spot. To this day, it has never been made clear as to who were behind the murder of the prime minister. Liaquat was succeeded by Khwaja Nazimuddin, who had in September 1948 succeeded Mohammad Ali Jinnah as governor general. With Nazimuddin now taking over as prime minister, Ghulam Mohammad became the new governor general.

Nazimuddin soon made it clear that under his stewardship, Pakistan's crisis over the language question would only be exacerbated. He visited Dhaka in January 1952. At a public meeting on 27 January, he reiterated the old argument of the ruling classes that Urdu would be the state language of the country as noted in the report of the Basic Principles Committee. His pronouncement left Nurul Amin, chief minister of East Bengal, surprised and irritated. Amin, who briefly was to serve as Pakistan's prime minister nearly two decades later in December 1971 before going on to serve as its vice president under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was on the dais that day. He was to recall the day twenty years after Nazimuddin made his comments:

"In the course of (Nazimuddin's) lengthy speech from a written script, he mentioned that Urdu shall be the state language. The statement was not only uncalled for but also inconsistent with the stand of the Muslim League members of the CA (Constituent Assembly) from East Pakistan and the assurances received from a section of their counterparts from the West…the Prime Minister seemed to have been so effectively briefed from interested quarters that he kept such an inflammable issue a guarded secret from me even and did not have the courtesy to consult me…I was sitting on the dais where he was speaking from and as soon as he uttered the sentence I could foresee its consequences. When I charged him after the meeting, he told me that the brief was prepared in Karachi."

The reputed intellectual Badruddin Umar, who has researched extensively on the Language Movement, has noted the ramifications of Khwaja Nazimuddin's incendiary remarks on the language question. According to him, no less an individual than Yusuf Ali Chowdhury, general secretary of the East Pakistan Muslim League, was disturbed by the governor general's comments. Chowdhury agreed with Chief Minister Nurul Amin that no one in the ruling circles was aware that Nazimuddin would make such a statement.

Students call strike

Interestingly, not Bangla but Urdu was the language spoken in the Dhaka Nawab family. Nazimuddin could not speak Bangla. But the speech he delivered at the public meeting had been prepared in Bangla written in the Urdu script, by Mizanur Rahman, a senior Bengali government official in Karachi. In the post-speech period, Aziz Ahmed, the non-Bengali chief secretary of the provincial government, told Nurul Amin that he had not seen the text of the governor general's speech, but if he had, he would have advised Nazimuddin against making his remarks on the state language issue. Aziz Ahmed would later serve as foreign secretary in the Ayub regime, working under Foreign Minister ZA Bhutto, who would appoint him minister of state for foreign affairs in post-1971 Pakistan.

The Dhaka University State Language Committee of Action called a meeting on the campus on 29 January 1952 to censure Nazimuddin over his comments. The next day, the East Pakistan Muslim Students' League, at a meeting at Dhaka University, severely criticised the governor general over his remarks and renewed the call for Bangla to be adopted as a state language of Pakistan. After the meeting, the EPMSL activists marched to the residence of the chief minister, where they chanted slogans advocating Bangla as a state language. They also called for a strike at all educational institutions in Dhaka for 4 February 1952.

On the same day, 30 January, an unrepentant Khwaja Nazimuddin, addressing a public meeting in Rajshahi, asked the people of East Bengal to eschew what he called provincialism.

So, what transpired after the tragedy of 21 February?

Following the shootings of 21 February 1952, it became clear that the whole of East Bengal and indeed the entirety of Pakistan were numbed by the tragedy. But the most important lesson emerging from the incidents of the day was that the movement for Bangla as the language of the state had assumed a much bigger dimension than could earlier be conceived of by politicians in the corridors of power. After 21 February, events moved with remarkable speed. On 26 April, 1952, as Abul Maal Abdul Muhith reports in his State Language Movement in East Bengal 1947-1956, a non-communal organisation going by the name of East Pakistan Students' Union was established. Alongside the emergence of the organisation came the fact of leading progressive Bengali thinkers getting together sometime in the middle of the year to form the Pakistan Shahitya Parishad.

An especially enlightening happening was the decision by the East Pakistan Muslim Students' League to turn itself into a non-communal organisation. This was done in 1953, at a time when politics at the national level in Pakistan was passing through a critical phase with dramatic changes being brought about in the power structure in Karachi. Between 22 and 24 August 1952 the East Pakistan Cultural Conference was held in Comilla, where the focus was on a reassessment of the language issue. The meeting was presided over by Abdul Karim Shahityabisharod, who made it clear that Bangla was the language of the people of East Bengal. He was emphatic in his assertion that Bangla was the symbol of the culture of the people of East Bengal.

The shootings of 21 February 1952 had a pronounced impact across the spectrum in the province. At Dhaka University hall elections, progressive students' groups turfed out groups which had so far had the support of the ruling classes. The first anniversary of the shootings went off peacefully on February 21, 1953. There was, reportedly, an understanding reached between the chief secretary to the provincial government and student leaders on the need to observe the day peacefully. Additionally, the government was keen to have a peaceful atmosphere maintained in view of the upcoming provincial elections.

At Dhaka College and Eden College

However, not everything was peaceful or satisfying. When students of Dhaka College and Eden College attempted to put up martyrs' memorials on their college premises, they ran into opposition from the management of the colleges. It was the view of the rather conservative college authorities that a cultural evening the students had organised to commemorate the day was uncalled for. They also disapproved of the songs sung by the students, calling them objectionable. One of the songs was, of course, Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury's "Amar bhaiyer rokte rangano Ekushey February / Aami ki bhulite paari…"

A significant offshoot of February 1952 was the appearance, in March 1953, of Hasan Hafizur Rahman's (then a rising poet and student leader) Ekushey Shonkolon. It was, however, swiftly banned and would not reappear until years later, in 1965 and 1968.