ESCAPE
Nidhu Bhusan Das
The Arrival
Sudden rain stopped us as we were trudging towards the haven, an arrow’s flight. Our guide said, the rain influenced by the nearby mountains would not last long. We waited in a house with bated breath for the rain to cease as we were in a hurry to escape across the border. We came a long way by motor launch and mostly on foot to escape the brutalities of the Pakistan Army. They were on patrol along the highway which we had left behind ducking through the jute fields which provided nice cover with the crop standing waist-high. Now we were behind the rail track patrolled by the army aboard train. During the rain the patrol- train had sped past the point we would use to cross over to India. Rain was a blessing, said our guide who had the refrain¬¬ – the more difficulty, the more escape route.
Yes, the guide was right, the rain stopped after about 15 minutes. We were led out of the house. As we were out in the open we found a sea of people heading towards the upland, and we were in a procession leaving hearth and home to keep alive. As they were crossing the border, people yelled in joy as if they were at the end of pilgrimage.
The journey was arduous and packed with fear and uncertainties. Any time we could be bombed from above. The countryside was beyond the control of the occupation army. So, there was no fear that they would find us. But the air attack was possible. Bombers and fighters were often found to be in sorties.
The place we poured into across the border was Boxanagar in Tripura.The sun was about to go down when we sat down to rest on 5 May 1971 after so many days of fear. My mother fell silent. She had left her mother, brothers and a sister, and could not think what would befall them once the army fanned out in the countryside. My grandmother was an octogenarian. Tears rolled down her crinkled cheek when my mother sought her permission to leave. It was a poignant moment. We got registered as evacuees, and were provided with rations.
We had a short shrift of having a dinner of bread with jackfruit juice before falling asleep.
.
The Crackdown
I left Dhaka on 8 March 1971.The day before Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman delivered his historic and classic speech at Suharawardi Uddyan.It was the Charter of Independence of Bangladesh. We from Dhaka College hostel walked near the venue, and found the lawn of Arts faculty of Dhaka University as the vantage point to listen to what the leader would say.It was in the late afternoon.All roads led to the Uddyan. The swaying crowd spilled over into the adjacent Ramna Park and the roads around. It was the day of reckoning.That night at the hostel we had long discussion on what the Bangabandhu had said. We tried to understand what the leader meant by the two terms ‘Mukti’(freedom) and ‘Sadhinata’(independence).
Meanwhile,on 1 March in the afternoon the flag of Bangladesh was displayed by the students after the sudden postponement of the first session of the National Assembly of Pakistan following the general elections in December 1970 which Bangladesh Awami League led by the Bangabandhu swept. The session was scheduled to be held from 3 March at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar,Dhaka.The people of East Pakistan were perturbed.
Endangered Languages
Endangered Languages
Nidhu Bhusan Das
International Mother Tongue Day has been observed across the globe with enthusiasm .It’s a nice idea since it encourages and inspires thought about the need for the preservation of languages which are not in the mainstream and belong to close communities. They, perhaps, do not have the inner strength to stand exposure to the wider linguistic world or the invasion of mainstream languages. Some of them are even beyond the fringe. But how far this will be able to save the endangered languages is a moot point in the age of globalization and cultural imperialism.
In India alone, according to UNESCO, 196 languages are endangered. In the whole world the number is staggering. If we consider the state of the speech communities whose languages are endangered we find that they are closed in nature. They do not often interact with the outer world, and if and when they or some members of them come in contact with the mainstream they do not use their mother tongue but interact, though feebly, using the mainstream language.Besides,their languages are not being enriched with creative use in the form of literary activities and developing capacity to embody the ideas and expressions of the world of science & technology and social sciences. Given the reality, how to save the languages from extinction is an important issue to be concerned with.
A language faces extinction or gets stagnated for different reasons which broadly fall into two categories- political and economic.
The advent of the Aryans and their dominance established the sway of the Vedic language which subsequently came to be known as Sanskrit having been reformed by the great grammarian Panini.The waves of Germanic tribes into England cornered the Celtic speech community, the aborigines of the country, and Anglo-Saxon became the language of the realm. Anglo-Saxon is the ancestor of English. The settlement of English Puritans in the American continent pushed the Red Indians to the fringes and English became the dominant language in North America. Australia, the penal colony of Britain, became a new English speaking territory. All this could happen because of the political dominance of the invading speech community.
With political dominance goes the economic mite and influence. The speech community with political dominance keeps others in subjugation and the subjects become bound to accept the language of the masters to retain or gain economic privilege.True, all of the subjugated speech community does not accept the language of the masters en masse. Those who are ambitious and stand to lose their existing privilege take the first step towards acquiring the second language. Ultimately most of them follow the suit. Thus in England under the Norman domination French was learnt by a section of the English speech community to remain in or climb to aristocracy as in India a new class of English using natives and anglophiles appeared during the British colonial rule.
In the present age of globalization and cultural imperialism, it is really difficult to preserve the languages incapable of adapting themselves to the developments in the fields of science & technology and social sciences. English is the global language and every branch of knowledge is encapsulated in English for it’s global reach.Besides, the cultural contents of the west are dished out in English through TV and Internet to the rest of the world in attractive ways for the other speech communities to adapt to and adopt to the perils of their mother tongues and folkways.
Vis-à-vis such invasion, only those languages can survive which have the resilience and capacity to absorb the shock and assimilate the contents of the knowledge and message and thereby enrich themselves. Yet they will remain in the fringe because the new generations of the other speech communities will choose English as the medium of instruction for jobs in the global market.
Nidhu Bhusan Das
International Mother Tongue Day has been observed across the globe with enthusiasm .It’s a nice idea since it encourages and inspires thought about the need for the preservation of languages which are not in the mainstream and belong to close communities. They, perhaps, do not have the inner strength to stand exposure to the wider linguistic world or the invasion of mainstream languages. Some of them are even beyond the fringe. But how far this will be able to save the endangered languages is a moot point in the age of globalization and cultural imperialism.
In India alone, according to UNESCO, 196 languages are endangered. In the whole world the number is staggering. If we consider the state of the speech communities whose languages are endangered we find that they are closed in nature. They do not often interact with the outer world, and if and when they or some members of them come in contact with the mainstream they do not use their mother tongue but interact, though feebly, using the mainstream language.Besides,their languages are not being enriched with creative use in the form of literary activities and developing capacity to embody the ideas and expressions of the world of science & technology and social sciences. Given the reality, how to save the languages from extinction is an important issue to be concerned with.
A language faces extinction or gets stagnated for different reasons which broadly fall into two categories- political and economic.
The advent of the Aryans and their dominance established the sway of the Vedic language which subsequently came to be known as Sanskrit having been reformed by the great grammarian Panini.The waves of Germanic tribes into England cornered the Celtic speech community, the aborigines of the country, and Anglo-Saxon became the language of the realm. Anglo-Saxon is the ancestor of English. The settlement of English Puritans in the American continent pushed the Red Indians to the fringes and English became the dominant language in North America. Australia, the penal colony of Britain, became a new English speaking territory. All this could happen because of the political dominance of the invading speech community.
With political dominance goes the economic mite and influence. The speech community with political dominance keeps others in subjugation and the subjects become bound to accept the language of the masters to retain or gain economic privilege.True, all of the subjugated speech community does not accept the language of the masters en masse. Those who are ambitious and stand to lose their existing privilege take the first step towards acquiring the second language. Ultimately most of them follow the suit. Thus in England under the Norman domination French was learnt by a section of the English speech community to remain in or climb to aristocracy as in India a new class of English using natives and anglophiles appeared during the British colonial rule.
In the present age of globalization and cultural imperialism, it is really difficult to preserve the languages incapable of adapting themselves to the developments in the fields of science & technology and social sciences. English is the global language and every branch of knowledge is encapsulated in English for it’s global reach.Besides, the cultural contents of the west are dished out in English through TV and Internet to the rest of the world in attractive ways for the other speech communities to adapt to and adopt to the perils of their mother tongues and folkways.
Vis-à-vis such invasion, only those languages can survive which have the resilience and capacity to absorb the shock and assimilate the contents of the knowledge and message and thereby enrich themselves. Yet they will remain in the fringe because the new generations of the other speech communities will choose English as the medium of instruction for jobs in the global market.
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