Upala Sen | | Published 21.02.21, 01:44 AM
“Amar bhaier rokte rangano/Ekushey February/Ami ki bhulite pari?… Coloured with the blood of my brother/Arrives every 21st of February/ How can I ever erase that memory? How can I ever erase that memory?” Long before this date came to be International Mother Language Day, it was commemorated as Bhasha Andolan Dibos in Bangladesh. The above lines are in memory of the students gunned down by police on February 21, 1952. Students protesting the announcement that Urdu was to be the national language of Pakistan, overlooking 44 million of its 78 million people living in East Pakistan and speaking a different tongue. That day, when Gaffar Choudhury saw the body of a student protester, his head blown off, those anguished lines came to him. In the years that followed, those lines became the anthem of Bhasha Andolan legatees.