Thursday 3pm 21st February 1952 The alphabet bleeds

The fight between the students and the police forces went on and on. But the situation reached its darkest phase when, around 3 pm, a group of armed police, instructed by district magistrate Koreshi, sprang out from behind the shop opposite to Dhaka Medical College hostel and took position in the hostel ground and opened fire. Some bodies fell on the streets, streaming blood dyed the roads with crimson hue. Some precious young lives turned into Bangla alphabet. In the tear gas afflicted murky ground of Dhaka University the fight between the cops and students went on unaware of the great sacrifice of human lives, first in human history, for the defense of the mother tongue.

Despite brutal firing and tear gas attack, the police could not occupy the medical college hostel. The students kept them at bay by throwing bricks. Soon the news of police shooting the students spread like thunderbolt. Life in Dhaka turned into a standstill. Thousands of people streamed into the Dhaka medical hospital to pay their tribute to the martyrs. Shocked and grief-struck their face turned stone, amber in their hearts.

The bodies of the dead and the injured were taken to the Dhaka medical hospital. Doctors and nurses rushed into the emergency department to save their lives. One of the bodies was unidentifiable because the head was blown away. Later it was identified as martyr Barkat’s dead body. Mourning became the East Bangla.

Later that evening the dead bodies were taken to the morgue. As the police snatched few unidentified dead bodies from the teargas afflicted public earlier that afternoon, the students, fearing that the police might try to do it again, guarded the morgue gate. But in the dead of the night, a group of armed commando troops, escorted by the police, stormed the morgue gate and forcibly took the dead bodies at the gun point. But a few die-hard students followed the military jeeps on foot and watched them dumping the dead bodies in the nearby Ajimpur cemetery. As soon as the army left the cemetery, the students came out of their hidings and marked the spots where the martyrs were dumped. The following morning thousands of people went to the cemetery and paid their tributes to the martyrs of Bangla language movement.

The First Shahid Minar

The Bangla language movement was essentially conceived and led by the Bangalee students. Since this movement onwards, students’ role in the national politics has been central. Unlike the political parties, the students’ movement always won the indiscriminate sympathy and support of the masses. In the language movement the roles of the politicians were insignificant (many top political leaders including Sheikh Mujib were imprisoned before the movement). They could not direct the students’ emotions and passions for nationalist political achievements. The Bangalee intelligentsia (the secular and liberal intellectuals, most of them were black listed by the Pakistani authority and brutally murdered by the collaborators of Pakistan army, the Razakars, Al-Badard and other militant Islamic fundamentalists just a week before the independence. Please visit Liberation War, Martyr Intelligentsia, Razakars and War Criminals pages for details) had a great contribution in this movement. Conservative parties like Muslim League, Jamat and other Islamic parties always opposed, and even tried to crash, the nationalistic movements. After independence, all the major political parties, whether democratic or military, tried to politicize the Bangla language day. The traditional morning rallies to the language monument are often disrupted by the fight between the opposing political parties to place the photos of their party leaders on the top of the monument. Islamic parties always opposed the Bangla Language Day and tried to persuade the Muslims from rallying and offering flowers to the Shaheed Minar (Martyrs’ Monument) by interpreting it as idol worship. Even in some areas where the Jamatis dominate, they attempted to destroy the monuments. Despite all the mean politics about the language movement and its legacy, Ekushay February will forever inspire the Bangalees to defend and love their sweet mother tongue- Bangla.