In Praise of Bangla, My Mother Tongue

I take pride in the fact that despite being born and raised in New York City, I speak Bangla fluently. I credit this mostly to my Bangladeshi parents for being brutal in their approach to teaching my younger sister and me a language that that was so violently fought for.

Feb. 21 is recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as International Mother Language Day in honor of linguistic diversity, prompted by Bangladesh’s 1952 National Language Movement. Prior to independence in 1971, present-day Bangladesh was East Pakistan. When the Pakistani government moved to eradicate Bangla from official use, despite its centuries-old history, and replace it with Urdu, Dhaka University students staged a peaceful protest on Feb. 21, 1952. The Pakistani police opened fire, injuring and killing protesters.

As young parents and new American immigrants, my parents were no less passionate about preserving their beloved language in their new home. My sister and I weren’t allowed to speak to our parents in English for the first 15 or 16 years of our life. To do so was considered disrespectful, even though they spoke English fluently. If we wanted something or if we had something to say, we could only say it in Bangla. My mother was a homemaker until I started school, and in those early years, she shared her love for Bangla songs, poetry and stories with us, showing us the romantic side of this poetic language.
Courtesy of Jennifer ChowdhuryJennifer Chowdhury, left, with her sister, Jabina Chowdhury, at Niagara Falls in 1993.

I was so accustomed to speaking in my parents’ tongue that in kindergarten I was put in a class with children for whom English was a second language because I was too shy to speak in English. (I was transferred into a regular class when my teacher figured out I was just timid.)

So even though I think, read and write primarily in English, I can’t really claim it as my first language. Growing up in New York City during the late 1980s and 1990s, when most people didn’t even know where Bangladesh was and referred to it as “that little country next to India,” Bangla was the strong thread that kept my family together. It was something my parents shared and entrusted to their American-born children.

When I was 15, my father sent me to Dhaka to spend the summer with my grandmother. When I arrived, my relatives in Dhaka were amazed at the ease and clarity of my Bangla. I was surprised that they would even fathom the notion that I couldn’t speak the language — how else was I supposed to communicate with my parents and elders? The idea that speaking in English with my parents, or any other Bengali adult, was a form of disrespect had been drilled into my brain.

When I started high school, I hoped and prayed that I would make a few Bengali friends with whom I could communicate with in my mystical language. But that didn’t happen until I started college. I wished so badly that my Guyanese, Dominican and Indian friends were Bangladeshi because some things were just easier to express in Bangla. For a history project in 10th grade, I decided to research the origins of Bangla. I learned about the Bong (Vong) tribe and Bangla’s close association to Sanskrit. I also learned about Bhasha Andolan (National Language Movement) and National Mother Language Day.

In 2010, I went to Shaheed Minar, Dhaka’s national monument commemorating the National Language Movement within Dhaka University, for the first time. I’d heard stories (my grandmother’s uncle was a part of the police force that was ordered to shoot the Dhaka University students, but he refused), read books and seen movies about the movement. But I hadn’t expected such a strong emotional response as I crossed the university grounds. Walking past the Bangla Academy, I found myself wishing that I was a part of Bangladesh’s history as a Dhaka University student.

Undulating crowds pushed me this way and that, and the sun burned into my skin, but that couldn’t keep me from marveling at the fruits of the shahids’(martyrs) labor all around me — masses of people who openly spoke a language that was almost banned, pushing and tripping over each other in a country that is now free from anyone’s rule except its own. I shared an entire heritage with these people. We had survived the slaughtering of language and freedom.

When I finally got up close to the monument and saw the bright red sun reflected in the back of the statue of the mother beckoning to her fallen sons, I found myself closing my eyes among the crowds for a brief second, and I expressed my gratitude for the people who laid down their lives so that my parents could openly speak and study in their centuries-old language, move across oceans and pass it down to me.

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