The linguistic shift from colonial to neo-colonial Bangla
by Farhad Mazhar
Prothom Biplober Khun berube Bhasha thekey
(The first revolutionary blood will be spilled from the poetry of the language)
The declaration of the young poets during the 1960s revolutionary movement of Bangladesh
My intention here is to raise some questions in order to clear up some common prejudices with regard to the Bangla language and our relationship with it. I would like to look into some of the common beliefs to open up new horizons for positive discussions. By ‘positive discussions’ I mean enhancing our ability to constitute ourselves as a political community. As I do not intend here to debate on the identity question, I take the historical presence of the state of Bangladesh as the defining principle of the ‘political community’. By this term I mean the emergence of a community that has succeeded in obtaining recognition as politically independent and sovereign because of its difference from other communities and states and its distinctive qualities. I make a distinction between the recognition by others as an independent, different and sovereign political community and internally constituting and knowing ourselves in our language, thought and practice as such — that is by living and knowing that we are indeed a community with a common destiny in the global system of the states and world history. The problem I am raising is not merely of politics, but the politics determined by our relationship to language.
Generally, we take it for granted that we are emotionally and culturally attached to our language, to Bangla bhasha. I argue that this is totally false; in fact such glorification cloaks a particular kind of politics that we must unmask and confront directly. By ‘matribhasha’ we literally mean mother-tongue, but in practice our so-called love for our mother-tongue reinforces a type of Bangla in cultural, political and social life that was essentially formed in Kolkata in the colonial period. The question I am raising is that inheriting the colonial, urban and Sanskritised Bangla is not wrong. It is a historically inevitable process, but our ahistorical and non-critical acceptance of a particular Bangla limited our linguistic, cultural and political development. Most importantly, despite a few literary and poetic exceptions, we failed to integrate the wealth of our diverse dialects, indigenous expressions and vocabularies into our language. This is particularly true about the philosophical language of our saintly traditions — the linguistic, literary, cultural and philosophical practice of fakirs and bayatis. The divides such as urban/rural, modern/Baul (peripheral), etc, are still dominant and define our cultural politics.
The ship of the East India Company was anchored in the villages near Kolkata. The subsequent urbanisation, rise of the printing press and privileging the print-based literary activity, market, formation of a colonised elite and culture contributed to the formation of a language that we call ‘promito Bangla’, or standard Bangla. So, when we say we love our mother-tongue, we actually imply the colonial and elite promito Bangla — and politically it means defending this Bangla as the determining source of our ideas and identities. The language in which a child is born to dwell is not what we mean when we claim to love the Bangla language; neither have we meant that we should build up what we have inherited in accordance with our common will; nor have we created a language to build up a proper future for the new and sovereign political community that came into being in 1971.
We have a peculiarly possessive attitude to the language we call amar bhasha or my language. In practice, given what we have said earlier, the colonial Bangla bhasha is not the language that I use on a daily basis — the language in which I think and express myself. The gap is crucial and critical and has serious linguistic, cultural and political implications. It is not merely an issue of dialect but our relationship to the language. To many who speak in promito Bangla is almost like speaking in another language.
In the post-1971 scenario promito Bangla even failed to satisfy the aspiration of the middle-class of a newly born political community, because of the difference between our imagined past and our living presence — that is, the new reality of an independent and sovereign Bangladesh. The claim of the linguistic nationalist, to whom colonial Bangla is the source of our identity, is far from the truth though Dhaka could not break out of its hegemony. In drama, lyrics and generally the appropriation of the ‘folk’ traditions into the urban culture, we could easily identify fissures here and there — but no systemic or fundamental break is visible. Usually poets make the first break, but the Dhaka-based poets loved by the print media are pathetic figures since their medium is essentially colonial Bangla or the poetic diction of the present Kolkata-based poets. I admire the poetry and literature of Kolkata. Nevertheless, the creative search for language, style, diction, expressions and the poetry in which the new political community could or should immerse itself is a critical question to me. I listen very attentively to the lyrics of the young singers, particularly the youths with a poetic bent. I assume that to succeed as popular voices they must satisfy a large rural audience and thus they may cause a shift from urban language to more popular expressions. Expecting that they might open up new linguistic horizons is not too much to ask. I must admire their talent and, in some cases, art — but due to lack of political perception of language that could nurture a new political community they failed to make a breakthrough.
We usually trace the embryo of our nationalism to the language movement of 1952, which was the protest of the urban middle-class against Urdu becoming the state language of Pakistan. It is said that the protest triggered the nationalist movement. This is perhaps true about the post-‘47 Dhaka middle-class but cannot explain why the rural people or the people outside Dhaka supported the movement. What always puzzled me is the support of the peasantry. The historical documents that I have desperately searched for and read and discussed with erudite persons so far for explanation have failed to satisfy me. So, I would like to open this chapter — a chapter that I feel has been closed for political reasons — for exploration and explanation.
The protest of the urban middle-class, a move symptomatic of our formation as a political community, does not explain the success of the consequent movement. We must bring up the question of the shooting of the students to death. It is important to understand that the death of the students evoked tremendous emotion in the farmers of rural East Pakistan and planted the seed of the crucial alliance between peasantry and the urban middle-class. This alliance was the force that ultimately reinforced the spirit of the emerging political community which succeeded in forming an independent identity and ‘liberating’ the nation.
The Muslims in the subcontinent did not learn English till 1857. Since 1757 they had been dreaming that the old Muslim rule in India was going to be restored again. Only after the failure of the Sepoy Mutiny did it become obvious that they must get English education. By that time the Hindu middle-class had been formed and was confronting the Muslims with its own community identity. When Muslims started to educate themselves the term ‘chhattra” (student) obtained a significant political meaning, symbolising the aspirations of the peasantry who were mostly Muslims.
The popular support for Pakistan came from peasantry of East Pakistan, which proves that the commonly accepted ‘two nation theory’ had very little ground. The peasantry, who were mostly Muslims, supported Pakistan — another significant sign that the people in this region had started to realise their separateness from the so-called ‘greater India’, which was the first step towards the formation of a new political community in 1971. These farmers were selling their jute, chilli, rice, etc to accumulate some money to send their sons (and sometimes their daughters) to schools, colleges and, if lucky, to universities. It was clear to the Muslim community that the students who were getting higher education were the new leaders of their society and would form the core of an enlightened middle-class. They would be the new magistrates, judges, barristers, doctors, educationists, etc. These aspirations and dreams were extremely important and have so far been systematically ignored by our historians.
So the students symbolised the aspirations of the emerging new political community which was deeply embedded in the history of Islam. The freedom from colonial oppression and the collective memory of battle against the colonial rulers were fully present in the new battleground opened in the educational front. The shift from previous anti-colonial armed struggle to the educational front is highly significant and we have hardly studied the implications of this shift.
If we keep the historical context in mind we can easily understand why the shooting and killing of chhattras became a highly emotional and violent political issue. The brutal event instantly exposed the truth that state of Pakistan was incapable of articulating, and realising, the dreams and aspirations of the majority population of East Pakistan. The conflict was not merely between Islamic West Pakistan and its secular east wing — it was essentially a crisis in the anti-colonial Islamic discourse as well. We did not follow this discourse.
So what I am contending is that the language movement has clearly two class components: (1) the hegemony of the linguistic and cultural nationalism of the urban middle-class, essentially formed in line with the paradigm of colonial Kolkata, and (2) the aspiration of the peasantry to have a prosperous and enlightened community through education. The language movement forged a class alliance that continued till 1971 and further succeeded in integrating the militant working class movement. The urban middle-class claims the whole credit for awakening the masses and instilling in them the spirit of nationalism, completely omitting to mention the contributions of the peasantry and working class, and systematically suppressing the history of the peasant and working class movements. This systematic suppression has had a detrimental effect on our internal conceptualization of us as a political community and our dwelling (sic) in our own language and culture. The urban middle-class falsely identified our debate as language and culture versus Islam and religion. The claim of the urban middle-class that the definition of our identity must be based on their understanding of language and culture has remained till today the major political hurdle to our transformation. The middle-class has succeeded in completely effacing the role of the peasantry and working classes in every way they could, including the narrative they repeat about 21 February.
The post-‘71 history of Bangladesh is the shattering of the class alliances that gave birth to the new political community we are talking about. This made possible the invasion of unbridled capitalism that failed to transform the peasantry and could only set up enclosed production spaces for export. The conditionalities of the World Bank and IMF, structural adjustment programmes and the mandatory new international trade regimes have now set into motion a kind of globalization that is termed ‘neo-colonial’.
What happened to our language in this shift from the colonial to the neo-colonial era? After the collapse of the crucial class alliance that was the foundation of the new political community that emerged in 1971, the Bangla language has essentially remained the language of a middle-class that has hardly any idea of peasant discourse or working class vocabulary. There are occasions when urban literary and cultural language courted the language of the rural population, including the poetry of the saintly tradition, but no bridge could be built. Nevertheless a colonial to neo-colonial linguistic shift has occurred. The best example is the language of advertisements, a mix of Bangla and English. English words are used in the Bangla syntax. The advertisements of various cellular phone companies capture the language of the urban middle-class youth in order to appear smart and cool.
It seems that the neo-colonial linguistic practice would like to prove that Bangla is a ‘failed’ language — just like Bangladesh is a ‘failed’ state. Neo-colonial Bangla is eager to demonstrate that Bangla bhasha as a language and sign system does not have the capacity to express the day-to-day needs and concepts of a modern society, not to mention serious thoughts; its vocabulary is so poor that one must borrow English words in every sentence. A middle-class that loses its connection with history also loses its relationship with its own language and culture, and becomes a drifting ship which has no anchor. It was inevitable that an event like 11 January, 2007 would take place to complete implementation of the neo-colonial agenda.
To me this is a serious political issue that can only be solved through literary and cultural efforts by powerful writers and thinkers in Bangla. I strongly believe that the neo-colonial impasse cannot be broken by conventional politics only. Unfortunately the literary and cultural movement is very weak. The need for such a movement can only arise from our political perception of ourselves. Perhaps we could start having dialogues among ourselves to try to explain the sense of our belonging to an independent, distinct and sovereign political community. Does it make any sense to us? Do we still belong to this community? Who else also belongs to this community despite the different ways we relate to our ethnicity, language, religion, etc? Perhaps I am searching for a way to transcend the wide divide between the identity based on language and culture and the identity based on religion. What I am arguing is that this divide is the result of history and not in our attitude either to language or to religion. We can cross this divide by engaging with both our language and religion but accepting unconditionally that our point of departure is 1971 — the appearance of a new political community in world history. The neo-colonial economic relations and the formation of a neo-colonial class and its powerful presence in Dhaka is again the greatest obstacle to resolving these issues.
What I am pondering is what happens to a state when the language of her citizens fails to make the political community coherent and unified? What happens if a political community fails to develop a language in which all classes belonging to the state can talk to each other comprehensibly? My intuitive answer is we get a Bangladesh that we now have after 11 January, 2007.
Language indeed matters in politics.
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