Tongue-Tied by Identity

Bangla, once a proud symbol of culture and resistance, has now become a politically charged marker of suspicion and identity.

In recent times, the mother tongue has turned into a burning political issue. Bengali, especially, famous as one of the sweetest languages in the world, has now turned into an issue of political conflict. This has happened because the citizens of India and Bangladesh, not the best of friends right now, speak the same native tongue – Bangla.

The dictions may differ, so do the dialects. The Bangla spoken in Chittagong and the Bangla spoken in Midnapur are just not identical. But catch a migrant labour from Kolkata speaking in his own dialectical variation of Bangla in Bihar or Madhya Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh or Jharkhand, he will be bashed up horribly on suspicion that he belongs to a minority community not favoured by the powers-that-be and is at once assumed to be an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh we are far from friendly with right now. His main problems are (a) he cannot speak Hindi or English and can only speak Bangla, maybe in the Midnapur dialect, (b) is poor (c) illiterate and (d) nine times out of ten, Muslim. So, the mother tongue in case it happens to be Bengali, assumes a politically biased identity in most states in India alongside West Bengal and its neighbour, Bangladesh.

What was once a marker of shared culture has thus been turned into a shorthand for suspicion. Language, instead of binding communities, has become yet another dividing line in South Asia’s already fractured politics.

Global importance

Bangla is the language of Rabindranath Tagore, scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, patriot Subhash Chandra Bose, filmmaker Satyajit Ray and spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda. Bangla’s global importance stems from its status as one of the world’s most-spoken languages, with over 210 million speakers in Bangladesh and India. It holds immense cultural and historical significance, as the language of a rich literary and cultural tradition. It is ranked among the top 6 most spoken languages globally.

The mother tongue cannot afford to receive step-motherly treatment in social, cultural, intellectual and academic circles. It opens a big, versatile and colourful window to the world because it helps the infant step down from the mother’s lap to crawl, take its first tottering steps and then run to join the world. Language per se, including the mother tongue, does not have an existence of its own. It exists only in relation to human beings.

A language exists in limbo until human beings have used it through their mouths, ears, hands, eyes and brain. Language is linked to its communicative qualities, its qualities of expression and articulation in writing, in print and in vocal articulation. The mother-tongue as a language for daily use in life and at work, in reaching out and crossing borders, has received a bad beating at the hands of more ‘elite’ and universally accepted languages like English or French for urban and elite Indians.

The mother tongue is described as the first language an individual learns, also called primary language. This term defines the language that people know best and use the most, the communication tool people most closely identify themselves with. It is with this concept in mind that the celebration of Mother Language Day was created, to represent two crucial components of the value of all world languages. Languages are the communication tools used by human beings to channel their expressions of identity and belonging, while mother tongue represents the most familiar language that one experiences while learning to communicate.

Linguistic autocracy

The celebration of International Mother Tongue Day recognized by UNESCO in 1999, is founded on a history of bloodshed and violence that took the lives of innocent people, including students, scholars and intellectuals because they asserted their right to use their mother tongue, Bengali, in all forms of communication in place of Urdu in Bangladesh. This day is February 21. It celebrates the martyrdom of people who laid down their lives during the Language Movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

Today, however, Bangla has turned into an instrument of political bias, of linguistic autocracy and last but never the least, a weapon of dangerously destructive religious fascism. The fact that February 21 is now commemorated by UNESCO worldwide is testimony to the universal recognition that language is never neutral but is inextricably bound up with questions of power, belonging and exclusion.

Mass support was the key spirit within freedom fighters in their struggle against a brutal army. Bangladesh gained support from across the world. Together with Pandit Ravi Shankar, pop singer George Harrison arranged a concert to strengthen worldwide support for Bengalis. After a nine-month war of liberation, at the cost of millions of lives, Bangladesh was created on 16 December 1971.

For the first time a country had chosen to identify itself with its language and culture. International Mother Language Day, celebrated annually on February 21, aims to promote the recognition and practice of the world’s mother tongues, particularly for the minorities. Few nations have so explicitly enshrined language as the bedrock of their sovereignty. Bangladesh remains the singular case where words themselves became the rallying cry for independence.

According to the 1961 Census, India had 1652 mother tongues identified with various nomenclatures in post-Independent India such as scheduled languages, non-Scheduled languages, regional languages, major languages, minor languages, minority languages, tribal languages, etc. There is no mention of the word ‘mother tongue’ anywhere in this classification. This creates fear in our minds about the complete disappearance of many of these 1652 languages by reason of a classification based on a hierarchy of caste and class. The classification creates a ‘ghetto’ in language, leading to fragmentation of language based on caste and class and thus, power – economic, cultural, political and social.

The aesthetic, scriptural and literal qualities of any mother tongue will remain unknown to the world, till it dies an ignominious death at the hands of politics, bureaucracy, E-mail, the Internet and the Establishment.

One is reminded of Vigdis Finnbogadottir, UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Languages, Former President of Iceland, who said: “Everyone loses if one language is lost because then a nation and culture lose their memory, and so does the complex tapestry from which the world is woven and which makes the world an exciting place.”

Every lost tongue is not just a linguistic casualty but a civilisational one. The world becomes flatter, poorer and more homogenous by it.

(The author is a noted film scholar, culture critic and a double-winner of the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema. Views personal.)