In West Bengal, India, an organisation called ‘Bangla Pakkha’ has begun a movement, demanding official usage and safe guarding of the language.
The question is why has it become necessary to launch a movement to popularise Bangla?
Specialists in Bangladesh say that this is done mainly to prevent the aggression of Hindi.
The organisation has a Facebook page where members demand the use of Bangla in all state services.
There was a complaint that services in a bank were not in Bangla and customers were asked to communicate in Hindi.
One of the organisers of Bangla Pakkha Garg Chatterjee, says: “Hindi cultural invasion has touched every aspect of our lives and when our backs were against the wall, we started the movement.”
Reporter for The Hindustan Times, Snignendhu Banerjee said: “our drive began in 2017 when a north India event called the Humayun celebration became popular in West Bengal.”
We have been repeatedly contending that Bengali culture is diametrically different to the north Indian culture and we use the example of the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971 where the linguistic identity superseded religious imperatives, he added.
Professor emeritus, Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, observed: “West Bengal is threatened by the domination of Hindi; the central government did not agree to the proposal to allow a Bangla name for West Bengal and the save Bangla drive emanates from a sense of nationalism.”
Calling the movement a challenging one, Sirajul Islam added: “the aggression of Hindi will continue; the drive has to morph into a movement against capitalism, otherwise it has no future.”