Groups around the township celebrated International Language Day on February 21 in a bid to promote and protect the diverse languages of the world.

Mastul

The AG Block-based socio-cultural organisation Mastul put up a road show at Baisakhi and passersby young and old, office-goers and rickshaw-pullers stopped to watch.

Biswajiban Majumdar (centre) at the Mastul event

The show was inaugurated by former chairman of Bidhannagar Municipality, Biswajiban Majumdar. Former chairman-in-council member Nandagopal Bhattacharya and his sister Ramola Chakraborty, the wife of late minister Subhas Chakraborty who runs a social organisation called Pather Pachali, were also present.

The event started with garlanding a statue of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in AG Block, as he was instrumental in shaping modern Bengali. Singer Tripti Sen performed the songs Amar bhai-er rokte rangano ekushey February and an Atulprasad song Moder gorob moder asha.

“Since it is assumed that learning Hindi and English would land one a good job, children are not reading Bengali books and their parents feel proud that their wards do not know Bengali,” lamented Majumdar. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has declared Bengali to be the sweetest language globally and it is also the fifth most widely spoken in the world, he said.

Mastul was founded in January 2013 and its key objective is to preserve the cultural wealth of Bengal. “But we are also working for the downtrodden, having conducted a health check-up camp in South 24- Parganas,” said Abhijeet Sengupta, president of Mastul.

Ganga Padma Bhasha Maitri Samiti

This group, comprising members of east Calcutta, has been celebrating this day at the Indo-Bangladesh border from 2004 but due to lack of government permits it couldn’t not do so this year.

This time the day was observed at IA Park. Former minister of education Kanti Biswas, former minister of parliamentary affairs Probodh Chandra Sinha, novelists Abul Bashar and writer Saroj Mohon Mitra had been invited to speak on the occasion.

The gathering at the Ganga Padma Bhasha Maitri Samiti programme

Biswas, who was born and brought up in Bangladesh, had taken part in the language movement of 1952. “We were then college students. Our leaders would order us to visit different villages to encourage youths to join the movement. I was with activist Abul Barkat when he was shot. He fell on the ground and said ‘Rashtrya bhasha Bangla chai’ twice before dying,” said an emotional Biswas.

He mentioned another language movement that took place in Assam. “In 1961, 11 youths died in police firings in Silchar on May 19 demanding that Bangla, and not Assamese, be made the official language of Barak, a valley in south Assam inhabited mostly by Bengalis who migrated from Sylhet,” said Biswas.

Former Left Front parliamentarian and the president of the group Amitava Nandi said: “We started this group to protect our language. People from West Bengal and Bangladesh should come together and pay respect to their common heritage and culture,” he said.

On previous years 100 youths from Durga Nagar would participate in a cycle rally and go up till the Petrapol border, where the celebrations would take place. This year they cycled to Salt Lake.

Matri Bhasha Mission

This group, originally situated in Agartala, celebrated the day in Calcutta for the first time this year.

Held at Aikatan, on February 22, the event was inaugurated by writer Swapnamoy Chakraborty. It was attended by education and cultural minister of Tripura, Anil Sarkar, second secretary, Bangladesh Deputy High Commissioner, Mousumi Wais, writer Sekhar Basu, director of EZCC Anup Motilal and other dignitaries.

Chakraborty said that though Bengali is not threatened there is a need to save the wealth of the language. “The younger generation has reduced Bengali to Benglish — a mixture of Bengali and English. I think it is up to the Bangladeshis to save the language now as unlike in India, they have a single language unifying them. According to Unesco, half of the 6,000 languages that are spoken today will disappear by the end of the present century and that would be very sad,” said Chakraborty.

Five visually challenged girls from the Behala Blind School performed songs. They were presented with walking sticks.

Treasurer of Matri Bhasha Mission, Subir Mondol said that they hold February 21 celebrations in various cities of the Northeast that have a sizable Bengali population. “Now we hope to hold events regularly in Calcutta too,” he said.

Sub-divisional information and culture office

For the second consecutive year, this wing of Bidhannagar sub-division celebrated the day on its new premise at DJ 4.

The programme was inaugurated by Malay Mukhopadhyay, the sub-divisional officer. “During my student days, I had difficulty understanding jargon in English as they had no equivalent in Bengali. But now-a-days many of these words have been translated into simple Bengali terms. This helps students from Bengali medium schools,” said Mukhopadhyay.

A one-man audio drama Madhusudan-er kotha was then enacted by Suman Bandopadhyay, founder of a cultural organisation called Utsha. The play was an imaginary take on the last days of poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt. He introspects on his life and finally hands over the literary mantle to Rabindranath Tagore.