Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

158 Part 2: Language and Society
Bangladesh exists due to LP-based war. The Partition of British India in
1947 divided Hindu-majority India from Muslim-majority Pakistan, the
latter comprising the non-contiguous West Pakistan and East Pakistan
separated by vast territories of sovereign India. In 1948, Governor-General
Mohammad Ali Jinnah made a language policy declaration that ‘Urdu, and
only Urdu’ would be the national language of all Pakistan. At the time,
Urdu was mostly spoken by elites in West Pakistan while East Pakistan,
although Muslim by religious affi liation, was a cultural extension of the
Indian state of West Bengal, forming a broad ethno-linguistic unity. The
declaration provoked protests from Bengali students, suppressed on 21
February 1952 with many deaths. The tragedy is commemorated annually
as Language Martyr’s Day (in 1999 UNESCO declared it International
Mother Language Day) and a unique monument, the Shaheed Minar, was
erected in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, to recognise the Language
Martyrs. Despite some amelioration to linguistic assimilation, resistance
spread from elites to masses, culminating in the ferocious 1971 civil war,
and, with Indian support, the emergence of independent Bangladesh.
Urdu remains the offi cial language of Pakistan today while article 23 of
the Constitution of Bangladesh makes Bangla the offi cial and national language
and creates the Bangla Academy. The Constitution requires the state
to ‘. . . adopt measures to conserve the cultural traditions and heritage of
the people, and so to foster and improve the national language, literature
and the arts . . .’. The Bangla Academy is designated within the national
academy of arts and letters as a language cultivation agency (Mohsin,
2003; Moniruzzaman, 1979) and is charged with continual elaboration of
Bangla, its terminology, literature, and expressiveness, with general promotion
and specifi cally with dissemination of new grammatical and phonological
norms. The Bengali Academy Ordinance of 1978 guarantees
autonomy, designates the President of the Republic as Patron-in-Chief
and specifi es that funding is provided by the Ministry of Culture. An eminent
educationist, appointed Academy president for two-year terms by
the Patron-in-Chief, convenes an annual meeting but lacks executive
responsibilities. Membership is open to distinguished persons or scholars
of ‘prestigious scientifi c merit or literary accomplishments’, with the bulk
of the membership, and its work, entrusted to linguistic experts.
This example reveals that constitutions are critical language policy
texts, the fundamental statements of national existence, but both the symbolic
and practical messages require continual interpretation. Constitutions
also make available the procedures for modifi cation. The constitution is
therefore the most public and declared mode of LP, the ultimate public
text, and involves laws, regulations, and formal operations of planning
and implementation. Even when constitutions are clear and unambiguous,
the circumstances in which they arose change, interpretations are
needed, new or changed values and political arrangements emerge. The