My language ... My Identity

International Mother Language Day....today is the day that the people over the world celebrate their language....their identity. It is the language that primarily shapes one's identity....and that's why a French is a French, an English is an English and I am, like innumerable others, a Bengali.
And 21st February definitely brings me a bit more pleasure, a bit more pride.....once it was said what Bengal thinks today.....the whole India thinks tomorrow.....twisting that a bit....what Bengalis thinks today, the world follows. Bengalis fought for the prestige of their mother language and that has ushered in this concept of celebrating the language.
But , to be frank....this is the day which associates a lot of other things for me....and that pains, that makes me ashamed...
It dates back to 1952....prior to that India earned her independence at the cost of partition and my Bangla was bifurcated on the religious lines...no I have never seen what then was East Pakistan and now Bangladesh. But heard a lot....from my grandmom, my father and so many other relatives...."with the magic wand in their hand, the leaders at the stroke of midnight made my home a foreign country", used to say my grand mom. What ever....then East pakistan and West Pakistan were formed...and in 1952 when the Pakistani government decided to make Urdu the national language, East Pakistan burst in a huge uproar....they speak Bangla....come on...they are Bengalis, they don't speak Urdu......while students were leading a silent march in Dhaka, the Pakistani military rained bullets on them and Rafiq-Barkat-Salim-Jabbar laid down their lives on the streets....just to keep the prestige of their mother language...which is none other than very much my own Bangla....
The Pakistani government was forced to make Bangla a national language jointly with Urdu...but the fire was far from over.....it ultimately catapulted into Mukti-Yuddha....ushering in a new country....named after my language..Bangladesh.
today while the whole world celebrate as mother language day......Bangladesh celebrate this as a day that marks the victory of their language, a day that marked their identity on the face of this earth. But its is painful, but true.....we are also Bengalis...on this side....but we celebrate this day almost as a ritual.....and just as a part of the whole other world....
Did the fight only established 'their' fight and identity?....is it not the language of 'us' too?...Its a shame that even so few of our people know about this day......
I am proud to be an Indian...I love my country for its vivacity...and for its "unity in diversity"....and never mean that we ought to be in the other side....though often I question ....what if there was no question of this OTHER? Today Bengalis in West Bengal has become a part of the conglomerated identity.....the Bengalis next door became "others" while all others became our own....and though this is not a fact that I rue...but has made us even lesser interested in our roots. The truncated identity seems to have made its way out through adopting a cosmopolitan culture....but what is alarming is that...it has resulted in the utter negligence of the root. Today we speak "Benglish"....or "Benghindi"....our parents takes enormous pride in the fact that "my ward is so fluent in Hindi and English...but his Bengali is so poor...but then that would even help".....I find knowing Bengali less than Hindi or English is a matter of great status impetus. So "Amar Ekushe" (eternal 21st) has just boiled down to a phrase that comes and goes away for the Bengalis on this side....after all it was 'they' who fought and that can never be 'our' history.....what if that was for the very language i speak.....linguistically we all are Bengalis....but by some bifurcating "shadow line", as perhaps Amitava Ghosh would have said.....we are never a united race...we are truncated,.....and for us 21st become a ritual to sing "amar bhaiyer rokte rangano ekushe february, ami ki bulte pari"....for 'them' it is all abut making the whole world know that Bangla lives and they live Bangla...