Bengali–Arabic script

in Nawabi Bengali

During the Nawabi period of Bengal, the system of writing was prevalent among Muslim Puthi writers, almost all Muslim Bengali Puthi writers followed this writing system, including some Hindu writers, whom Iswarchandra Vidyasagar at Fort William College in 1818 introduced the present Bengali alphabet system. At the time of doing this, the interpreter named Puthi or Battala Puthi.^[6] And 72 puthis have been found written following the contemporary style, including Alaol's Padmavati,^[7] Yusuf-Zulekha of Shah Muhammad Sagir,^[8] Hayrat al-Fiqh by Muhammad Ali,^[9] মুহাম্মদ ফাসিহ^[10] etc. Some of these specimens are also preserved in Gallery-33 (Manuscripts and Documents) of the Bangladesh National Museum including Sheikh Muttalib's "Kefayatul Musallin".^[11] and Muhammad Khan's "Maqtul Husain" (1645).^[12] There are thousands of such interpreters in various archive buildings, DU libraries, Barendra Museum. Sheikh Muttalib made this statement in the preface to his book Kefayat al-Musallin: I am aware of the fact that I am committing an infinite sin in writing about Islam in Bengali.^[13]^[14]

After 1947, during the rule of New Pakistan

Ever since the formation of Pakistan, the introduction of Arabic script in Bengali language in the new Pakistan had religious sentiments on the one hand and state unity on the other. It was said that apart from Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Punjabi language as the Arabic alphabet is being used — Solidarity will be strong. The main initiator was the Union Education Secretary or Education Minister Fazlur Rahman.^[15] In this regard, he tried to get the cooperation of the educators of East Bengal. The proposal was made by the Education Secretary at the All Pakistan Education Conference in Karachi in 1948. A meeting of the Central Education Advisory Board in Peshawar in 1949 also strongly recommended that Arabic be the only alphabet in Pakistani languages. Fazlur Rahman, speaking at the second session of the Pakistan Education Advisory Board in Peshawar on 12 February 1949, said that one of the difficulties in developing the same national vision was the problem of different fonts. In this context, he described the usefulness of the Arabic alphabet. Although the language movement of March 1948 came to a standstill, the reaction and resistance in East Pakistan against the introduction of Government of Pakistan continued. In the last week of February 1949, the students of Bangla Department of Dhaka University protested against the attempt to introduce Arabic alphabet in a meeting. It was presided over by Mustafa Nurul Islam. At this meeting a parliament was formed with the students of Bangla department. Md. Nurul Islam was elected president and Ila Dasgupta and Ashraf Siddiqui joint-general secretaries. Besides, alphabet sub-committee was formed with Nazrul Islam, Mumtaz Begum, Rizia Khatun, Khalilur Rahman and others. Meanwhile, on the second day of the budget session on March 12, 1949, a protest march of the student federation was stopped by the police when they tried to march in front of the council building and police arrested Afzal Hossain, Mrinalkanti Barri, Bahauddin Chowdhury, Iqbal Ansari Khan, Abdus Salam and AKM Moniruzzaman Chowdhury. They were held captive without bail. In the first week of April 1949, Naimuddin Ahmed, on behalf of the Language Committee of the East Pakistan Muslim Chhatra League, said in a statement to the press: "The literacy rate in East Pakistan is 12 to 15 per cent. Attempts are being made to turn the educated into illiterate with the stroke of a pen. As a result, the entire education system of East Pakistan will be ruined."^[16] In the 1950s, the East Bengal Language Committee was formed under the leadership of Maulana Akram Khan to get a detailed explanation of the language problem from the East Bengal government and was asked to prepare a report on the subject. As part of the project, in 1950 they set up 20 centers for teaching Bengali in Arabic script in different districts of East Bengal.^[17] The committee prepared their report by December 6, 1950. However, it was not published before 1958. Here an effective measure is proposed by the government to solve the language problem. Where they recommended writing Bengali in Arabic script.^[18] When the proposal to write Bangla in Arabic script was tabled in the Constituent Assembly in 1950, Dhirendranath Datta protested and proposed to give Bengali language equal status with other languages of the Pak-assembly.^[19]

On 26 March 1951, the Government of Pakistan re-introduced the proposal to write Bangla in Arabic script in the CAP and pressed for the replacement of Arabic script for Bengal. Among the few other MLAs in East Bengal, Dhirendranath Dutta sharply criticized the plan to change Bengali, saying that the people of East Bengal were being turned into illiterate people by introducing foreign scripts to write Bengali. He vehemently opposed the proposal to replace the Arabic script for the Bengali alphabet. When the same proposal to adopt Arabic script for writing Bengali was formally discussed in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan (CAP) in April 1950, he spoke in favor of Bengali. In particular, he demanded the immediate rejection of the decision to introduce Arabic script instead of the Bengali alphabet and called upon the government to immediately adopt Bengali as one of the state languages of Pakistan. Dhirendranath Dutt emphasized on the CAP floor: "I represent not only Hindus but also the Mussalmans. I can tell you that the ordinary people will not understand the language (i.e. Arabic) that is sought to be introduced in Eastern Bengal. That policy shall have to be changed. I do not know whether the Government is aware of this fact that amongst the large sections of the people and especially among younger generation there is a demand made in a certain conference that the Bengali language should be made one of the State languages of Pakistan."^[20]

Dutta criticized this during the discussion of the budget of the Parliament session on April 30, 1953, "Then Sir, there is another matter to which I shall refer to. I want to be brief because the Honourable Minister for Information and Broadcasting has entertained us with a cinema at the "Paradise" and has asked me not to criticise much! I must respect his wish, but an other matter that has been referred to is the teaching of Bengali through the Arabic script. The Honourable Minister for Commerce, who was sometime before the Minister for Education, told this House that this is very popular in East Bengal but it is not. If we make an inquiry into the matter it will be found that really it is extremely unpopular and that no one in East Bengal wants that Bengali script should be done away with and Bengali teaching should be made in the Arabic script, but, Sir, the Government wish to pursue this matter and that shows Sir, the undemocratic spirit of the Government..^[21] Sulaiman Nadvi was brought to a seminar in Dhaka University in 1953, where he advocated this language policy. The students beat him up while leaving after the speech. At that time Muhammad Shahidullah, Syed Ali Ahsan etc. protected him from the wrath of the students.

Criticism

Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi said, this decision to remove the writing system of Bengali language from Arabic letters to Sanskrit letters was extremely suicidal for the religious entity of Muslims in the region. As a result of this decision, a large population of this region became 'alien' from the vast knowledge-store of Islamic knowledge and science written in Arabic script. According to him, similar plans were made for the Turkish language. He said that the Turkish language, which was written in Arabic script for thousands of years, due to Kemalism, the writing style of that language was changed from Arabic script to Roman/English script, thus alienating the large Muslim population from their thousand years of glorious history-tradition and thousands of years of Islamic knowledge.

In Zia's regime

In his regime, after the assassination of Sheikh Mujib, Ziaur Rahman was droved by the anxiety to invoke a national personality free of the cultural association with the neighbouring Bengal towards adopting certain measures. Efforts were made to introduce to the Bengali language words from Persian and Arabic vocabulary-measures to revive the Do-bhasha (bi-language) or the measures to create "Pak-Bangla" language of post-partition period as described by Abul Mansur Ahmed.^[22] Thus, the slogan "Joy Bangla"- linguistically of Sanskritic and Bengali origin was replaced with the more Persianised "Bangladesh Zindabad".^[23]

Bengali–Arabic script

History

in Nawabi Bengali

After 1947, during the rule of New Pakistan

Criticism

In Zia's regime

Sample

Related pages

References

Wikiwand - on