Why is 21 February international mother language day?

International mother language day, 21 FebruaryWhen the State of Pakistan was founded in 1947, had a large majority of the approximately 70 million inhabitants Bengali as their mother tongue. But the only official language of the new Pakistan was Urdu. That decided the political elite. They spoke Urdu, the main language in the West of the new country. (West was then called West Pakistan and is now Pakistan.)

In the East of the new country (then East Bengal and East Pakistan from 1956), where Bengali was the most important language, broke bright protest against this language decision. On the University of Dhaka (now the capital of Bangladesh) organized the students all from 1948 demonstrations, but that gave not much on. Early 1952 flared the protest on the University and the police opened fire on the demonstrators. On February 21, there were several deaths.

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Author: Dries Debackere

Machine translation: SDL Machine Translation (previously SDL BeGlobal)

Post-editing: No post-editing

Source language: Nederlands (nl)


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