The Tangled Politics of 2 Peoples With 1 Tongue

OR over 50 years, West Bengal and its political parties have joined Bangladesh in paying homage to the 1952 martyrs of the Bhasha Andolan (language movement) on Ekushey or 21st February.

- SHIKHA MUKERJEE

This year was different. The mood was sombre, heavy with a foreboding that events in the neighbouring country had changed the common ideological and cultural heritage.

In a spontaneous effort to compensate and almost as a move to reassure people, political parties across the spectrum did a little more in Kolkata. The apprehension articulated by author Abul Bashar that in the "confusion" of the turbulent times in Bangladesh, it has "lost itself" was affirmed by speakers of all stripes. Constrained by her position as chief minister, a circumspect Mamata Banerjee said, "We should not talk about another country," at the event organised by her government to do two things at once, pay homage to the martyrs and celebrate International Mother Language Day.

In Kolkata's College Square, lined by bookshops and universities, the CPI(M) organised a programme that paid tribute to the language martyrs of Dhaka through the National Book Agency in collaboration with the Students' Federation of India, and celebrated the Red Book Day to mark the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. A pamphlet with an article by Communist Party founder Muzaffar Ahmad on fundamentalism, authoritarianism and imperialism as well as former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu's 1946 speech in the then Bengal Legislative Assembly was released.