Editor,
International Mother Language Day is observed every year on 21 February to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. This year’s theme of the International Mother Language Day is ‘Multilingual education is a pillar of intergenerational learning’.
It was first announced by the UNESCO on 17 November, 1999 that 21 February would be observed as International Mother Language Day every year. The date, 21 February, was chosen to honour the language martyrs who were killed on the streets of Dhaka on that day in 1952 when they were demonstrating for the inclusion of Bangla as one of the national languages of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
It is interesting that there is a close connection with those two dates with the life of the Mother (Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator), as 21 February is her birthday (Born Mirra Alfassa in Paris in 1878), and 17 November is the day on which she left her body in Pondicherry in 1973.
Is it a mere coincidence? Now, let us recall what Sri Aurobindo said after India’s Independence Day happened to coincide with his birthday. In his message on the day of India’s Independence, he said, “August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as a sanction and seal of the divine force that guides my steps on the work I began in life, the beginning of its full fruition.”
Sanction and seal of the divine force must be behind all the languages of the world. We need to protect them for our own survival. It is a matter of concern that thousands of languages are under threat from languages of powerful groups.
According to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, one language dies every 14 days as powerful groups impose their languages on speakers of less common languages. Disappearance of a language means a great loss of cultural and international heritage. It is a loss of a storehouse of information on tropical medicines and herbs available only in these languages.
India should not follow the dangerous path of ‘one nation, one language’ which broke down Pakistan into two countries. The Centre must treat all Indian languages equally and refrain from imposing Hindi on the speakers of regional languages.
Sujit De