History of 21st February

Today is 21st February. I cannot stop myself before expressing my feelings about the day. Even though I am an immigrant of Canada, I cannot, maybe never forget my birthplace which is Bangladesh. (I will tell about that later)

21st February was the Mother-Language Day, now it is the International Mother Language Day which gets it declaration from the UN on 17th November, 1999.

Bangladesh was ruled by Pakistan before she got her independence in 1971 and she was ruled since 1945. Before that the whole Indian subcontinent was ruled by the British. However, when erstwhile Prime Minister of Pakistan declared that the Urdu would be the only state language of the whole Pakistan, the students as well as people of all stages, such as, doctors, journalists, workers, and labours protested against the statement of the prime minister. Therefore, all these people brought out a movement breaking the Curfew on 21st February. On that day, a lot of people died by the open fire of the police. But, it was not ended, the movements and protests increased uncontrollably and Pakistan government faced tremendous problems. Finally, the government declared Bengali as the second state language after seeing no way to control.

There was also strong logic: Bengali speaking people were the majority of the whole Pakistan, and West Pakistan (Present Pakistan) has several languages beside Urdu. In addition, there was also lot of partiality in many sectors, such as, political, economical, job, industrialisational, educational sectors. Most probably, people of East Pakistan became angry from those partiality, and finally, after the declaration of the state language, it became clear to everybody. Then, first anger came from Language Movement which finally directed Bangladeshi to independence.

Thus, the 21st February has become the Mother Language Day of Bangladesh. There's another story how this Mother Language Day becomes to International Mother Language Day. Before 1999, it was celebrated by only Bangladesh. Now it is celebrated by all over the world. There's another interesting thing which is: Pakistan did not want to declare Bengali as the state language; but when this proposal was told by Bangladesh in the UN meeting, Pakistan was the first country who agreed with the proposal.