internationalmotherlanguageday

It's Feb 21st and a national holiday today in Bangladesh, for international mother language day. It was declared by the UN in 2008 but started right here in Dhaka in the 50s

Pakistan was formed in 47 and BD was known as East Pakistan (as you see we, don't even share a border though!) Government was based in the west and in 1948 Urdu was declared as sole national language. The East wasn't happy cos majority spoke Bangla so wanted it to be declared as one of the other national languages. Protests started and today in 1952 police opened fire on a student rally in Dhaka University killing a few and injuring hundreds

So since that day, the 21st has been celebrated to honour the martyrs and is also a big reason why so many Bengali people are so proud of the language and get visibly upset if you can't speak it... Cos kids literally died for it.

There's a big vigil going on today which starts from midnight. Roads are closed, People walk to the memorial statue by the University - shahid minar - and lay flowers. The president, prime minister and others speak. It's really pretty

ekusheyfebruary #dhaka #bangla #banglalanguage #mothertongue #multilingual #bilingual #language