by Nurul Kabir

I understand by ‘freedom of spirit’ something quite definite – the unconditional will to say No, where it is dangerous
to say No.
   Friedrich Nietzsche
   
   While consent – the consent of the people at large that is – remains the fundamental principle of democratic governance, the governors’ respect for dissent – the dissent of even a single thinking individual – remains the political essence of democratic pluralism. The consent of the citizens to any matters of national importance, or their dissent against such matters for that matter, can only be expressed if the people have the legitimate right and scope to speak out their minds freely – without any restriction. It was not for no reason that the intellectual protagonists of classical democracy, like John Milton, put ‘the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely… above all liberties’, or Voltaire was ready to ‘defend unto death’ one’s ‘right to say’ something that he does ‘not agree with’. Understandably, a government with democratic values not only guarantees the people’s inalienable right to freely express their views in general, it also ensures safety to an individual citizen for expressing even unpopular views... [ + ]

Language and political community

The linguistic shift from colonial
to neo-colonial Bangla

by Farhad Mazhar

Prothom Biplober Khun berube Bhasha thekey
   (The first revolutionary blood will be spilled from the poetry of the language)
   
   The declaration of the young poets during the 1960s revolutionary movement of Bangladesh
   
   My intention here is to raise some questions in order to clear up some common prejudices with regard to the Bangla language and our relationship with it... [ + ]

A lost page of history

A day in the month of February 1952

by Alo Choudhury

It was like any other morning. Breakfast and off to school. Lalbagh to Sadarghat via Chawk Bazaar, past Mitford Hospital, Babu Bazaar fruit market, Patuatuly past Ahsan Manzil. Kalachand and Maranchand Gondhobhonik all looked normal. Even Kotwali thana looked no busier than before... [ + ]

Bangla the core of our national identity

The following presentation was made by the late Enayetullah Khan, founder-editor of New Age, at an assembly of the Asian Study Group in 2004

I have no first-hand account to relate of the electrifying events of February 21, 1952 that had lighted the spark of a new national consciousness among the Bangla-speaking constituents of the then Pakistan. The day’s events centring on Dhaka University were tragic and landmark at once in that the students had shed blood, braved death, and successfully forced the hands of the Pakistan ruling coterie to yield to their demand of giving Bangla language the status of one of the two state languages of what is now an unlamented Pakistan as far as the people of this land are concerned... [ + ]

The Memorandum, 1951

Member, Constituent Assembly
   Karachi, Pakistan
   
   We, the students of Dhaka University, who initiated the language movement in East Bengal three years ago who are now more determined than ever to secure for Bengali the status of state language of Pakistan, will take this opportunity, while you are all assembled at Karachi, to press once more our legitimate claim... [ + ]

Tone and tenor, shade and stroke, sound
and silence

Cultural synthesis in formation and
evolution of political identity

by Mahfuz Sadique

Who we are? Why we are the way we are? Who we want to be? Such and other questions on identity are important. Wars are fought for one identity to prevail over the other, boundaries are drawn with the coloured pencils that a sense of identity hands us. Identities are multiple and divergent. No human is free from the million parameters that define their identity. We are Bangladeshis; we are Bengalis; we are Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Indigenous; we are man, woman; we are upper, middle, lower-income bracket; we are third world; we are human... [ + ]

Misplaced stress, inadequate articulation and chronic myopia

Expression missing for a nationalist economy

by Tanim Ahmed

Less than a week before Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, a former commerce minister, vowed to veto any outcome at the ministerial summit of the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong, if Bangladesh were not guaranteed a fully free market access of textiles to the developed countries, 24 congressmen had written to the president of the United States that any such bid eyeing the US market must be blocked. In a letter dated December 8, 2005, the congressmen wrote to George W Bush, ‘asking that the US government block any attempts to secure a blanket zero-duty, zero-quota status for [least developed countries]’. It had been a long-standing demand of Bangladesh that it be granted duty- and quota-free market access to the developed countries, which mainly meant a preferential market access to the US since most other lucrative destination offer preferential access to all least developed countries... [ + ]

From Ekushey to emergency

Chronicles of a continuum in political expression

by Shameran Abed

There is always a tendency, in the way that history is told, to encapsulate entire movements or great struggles within one or a few significant events or milestones. When we think of the American Revolution, we think of events such as the Boston Tea Party, or in the case of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement in India, we recall his long march to the sea to make salt. So too is the case with our language movement; for, in reality, it is so much more than what transpired on that 21st day of February in 1952. That day was not meant to hold such significance, and neither would it have galvanised the people of this country in the way that it did had it not been for the mindless act of aggression and barbarity of our rulers on a peaceful procession that had been brought out in demand for our right to speak in our own language. The language movement was, of course, more than a day of bloodshed, it was a long struggle to realise our right to freely express and to express in the language of our choosing... [ + ]