Bangladesh is perhaps the only nation on earth where nationalism revolves around culture, and not politics or religion. This was brought home to us once again as Bangladeshis rose as one to pay homage to their language martyrs on February 21, an event they have observed every year for 58 years.
What happened on February 21, 1952 was something unique. The crowd that had milled that day in the Dhaka University and Medical College area and the five young men — Salauddin, Jabbar, Barkat, Ahmed, and Salam — who fell to police bullets that evening were there to defend their mother tongue against Pakistan’s plan to force Urdu on its former eastern wing. It was a fight for one’s pride and identity, and as the news of the killing — and of more deaths next day — spread, people rallied to mount an unprecedented cultural crusade.
What happened as a result is well known. Pakistan was forced to withdraw its plan, Ekushey February became a mythic symbol of Bengali unity, and the fight for freedom that thus gained momentum led inevitably to the independence of Bangladesh in December 1971. In 1999, UNESCO made “February 21” the International Mother Language Day, acknowledging the value of identity in shaping a nation’s culture.
I don’t know of any other nation that responds to its cultural events with so much outpouring of zeal. It’s like a continuous rediscovery of one’s soul. Over the years, the Martyrs’ Day hasn’t lost any of its sheen, and every year, Ekushey book fairs all over the country keep getting bigger and bigger. This year in Dhaka, 366 organisations put up over 500 stalls, with about 100 of them spilling out on the streets outside the Bangla Academy, where people had an even closer access to books.
And every year, Bangladeshis greet Pahela Boisakh, the Bengali New Year’s Day, that falls in mid-April, as another pre-eminent occasion to renew their cultural pride. It’s not just a day when people come out on the streets in their best clothes, colourful parades are held with festoons, paper masks and banners, and Dhaka assumes the look of an enormous village fiesta. It’s also the day when people gather in Dhaka’s Ramna Park to be steeped in the music of Tagore and Najrul. To Bangladeshis, it’s a tradition as important as observing religious rituals.
The story of this tradition goes back almost 50 years and reveals yet another force behind Bangladesh’s liberal cultural mindset — it’s deep, almost obsessive, love of Rabindranath Tagore.
It all began in 1961, the centenary of Tagore’s birth, when a group of prominent intellectuals decided to seize the occasion to launch a movement to promote and nurture Bengal’s musical heritage. Tagore was to them the epitome of a liberated mind and his birth centenary was, therefore, an appropriate occasion to stand up against the narrow, fundamentalist ideologies that the Central government of Pakistan was trying to force upon Bengalis.
With Begum Sufia Kamal, a noted poet and writer, as president, they formed a group called “Chhayanat”, which quickly became, and remains, one of the most abiding cultural influences on generations of Bangladeshis. Its soirees under the great banyan tree at Ramna Park, with Tagore’s music filling up the skies, added a totally new flavour to Pahela Boisakh and took it to a higher level of significance. When the authorities in Islamabad committed their second major cultural blunder, issuing a fatwa in 1965 banning the singing and broadcasting of Tagore’s poems and songs, “Chhayanat” led the people on another cultural crusade that further galvanised their desire to be free.
After 1972, “Chhayanat” became a national icon. Even a bomb attack in 2001 by extremist and fundamentalist elements couldn’t keep people away from its soirees under the great banyan tree. It’s because of “Chhayanat”, one can’t but agree that Tagore has remained a liberating force that stirs the soul of Bangladesh and has saved it from descending into narrow orthodoxy.
For India, as it gropes for effective ways to deal with its eastern neighbour, herein lies a lesson as well as an opportunity. Forget politics and the pros and cons of economics. New Delhi would do well to remember that the heart of Bangladesh lies in its culture and Tagore is its reigning spirit. A little over a year from now, in May 2011, Bangladesh would be celebrating another momentous occasion in its cultural history — the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s birth. India would be celebrating it too, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has, very wisely and appropriately, expressed a desire to make it a joint affair. If that could be done through well-coordinated plans and programmes, we’d surely be warming our way into the heart of Bangladesh in a manner that talks alone on political and economic cooperation will never allow us to do.
