2/29/2024 0 Comments Bangladesh victory day 2021The Bengali Language Movement as a precursor the rise of Bengali nationalism The influence of larger than life literary behemoths such as Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay transcends beyond politically-made boundaries and remains as the common ethno-linguistic heritage of the Bengali people, who were divided into two nationalities with the creation of Pakistan in 1947, and psychologically divided as early as 1905 with Lord Curzon’s first Partition of Bengal that year, as part of the British-era ‘Divide and Rule’ policy, aimed at weakening the cradle of Indian nationalism – the Bengal region. The Bangladeshi people are historically and culturally connected with the eastern region of India, particularly with the states of West Bengal and Tripura. Nowhere was it more evident than in the East, where the Bengali-speaking population had little in common with their Western counterparts, who were largely of Punjabi and Pashtun descent. The Pakistani people, despite being largely Islamic in terms of religion, remained divided on ethno-linguistic lines, largely influenced by geo-cultural factors. On the West lay modern-day Pakistan and in the East lay modern-day Bangladesh. When the Indian Subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, the Islamic state of Pakistan was formed as a non-contiguous territorial entity on the western and eastern sides of India. The roots of discontent of the Bengali people towards the Pakistani government, which eventually metamorphosed into a nationalist movement, can be traced back to the immediate post-independence period in the late 1940s. The political elite of Pakistan were dominated by the Western side that had no respect for East Pakistan’s majority Bengali people or their language and cultural distinctiveness. The story of Bangladesh’s independence is also the story of how the Pakistani military leadership’s systematic persecution, massacre and rape of the Bengalis of erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971, numbering in tens of thousands, was brought to an end by India’s timely military intervention on the side of the Bengali resistance forces (referred to as the Mukti Bahini) during the course of Liberation War against the tyrannical West Pakistani regime. Last week, on 6 December, India and Bangladesh observed Friendship Day (Maitri Diwas/Moitri Dibos) to commemorate India’s recognition of Bangladesh as a sovereign and independent state in 1971. It’s always been a country for everybody.” (Dr Shashi Tharoor, Al Jazeera English, 2017) It’s not a country of one religion or one kind of people. “When some Pakistani Generals in 1971 foolishly spoke of a jihad against the Hindu unbelievers, they were fighting a country whose army was commanded by a Parsi (Zoroastrian), whose Air Force in the Northern Sector was commanded by a Muslim, whose Eastern Command that marched into East Pakistan was commanded by a Sikh and the General who was helicoptered to negotiate the surrender of the Pakistani forces was Jewish. 2021 marks 50 years since the end of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 that saw the birth of a free nation of Bangladesh and the biggest surrender of troops since the Second World War, 93,000 in number, as the genocidal state of erstwhile West Pakistan (now Pakistan) was brought to its knees by the combined strength and will of Bengali nationalists of erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the Indian armed forces. In Hindi, this day is known as Vijay Diwas, celebrated on 16 December every year in Bangladesh and India. Bijoy Dibos means the Day of Victory in Bengali language.
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