The Bangladeshis are also exemplary: in a relatively rare instance of a people who loved their mother tongue Bengali so deeply, they were willing to sacrifice their lives to be able to speak it
Illustration/Uday Mohite
Most national anthems are dramatic and grandstanding, praising the motherland/fatherland as the most glorious nation on earth, or words to that effect. Some, like the French La Marseillaise, are rather blood-thirsty, created, like many others, after horrific wars had claimed thousands of lives. It goes, "Do you hear in the countryside/ The roar of those ferocious soldiers?/ They're coming right into our arms/ To cut the throats of our sons, our women/…Let's water the fields with impure blood."
Given this patriotic, knife-at-your-throat singing tradition, it is utterly disarming to discover that the Bangladeshi national anthem would rather rejoice over a motherland, the scent of whose mango groves drives you crazy.
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The Bangladeshi national anthem, Amar Sonar Bangla (My Golden Bengal), sweetly goes, "O ma/Faguné tor amér boné/Ghrané pagol koré/Mori hay/hay re/O ma." (Oh mother/In spring, the scent of your mango groves/Is so intoxicating/I could die, Oh ma.)
The poem was written by Rabindranath Tagore in response to the 'Bongo bhongo,' a phrase that could have been charmingly alliterative, had it not stood for Lord Curzon's brutal Partition of Bengal in 1905. Romantic and passionate, Tagore's poem evoked a golden, unified motherland. Decades later, Bangladesh adopted it as its national anthem, following its liberation in 1971.
The Bangladeshis are also exemplary: in a relatively rare instance of a people who loved their mother tongue Bengali so deeply, they were willing to sacrifice their lives to be able to speak it. Following Partition in 1947, when Pakistan imposed Urdu as the official language on former East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), the people revolted, and many were killed in the language agitation of February 21 (Ekushey), 1952. The incredibly lyrical Bengali language can do that to you. Not only did 1952 become a turning point in the eventual liberation of Bangladesh, but every February, they have a popular, month-long Ekushey Book Fair in Dhaka that redeems, reader after reader, the sacrifices of the language martyrs.
I had mentioned in a previous column how a Bengali friend from Kolkata, while visiting Dhaka, remarked with an admiring pang, how people in Dhaka knew their Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam far better than the average person in Kolkata. So I should hardly have been surprised to come across the Bengal Foundation's absolutely glorious Bengal Boi (Bengal Book) bookstore in Dhaka. It has an entire four-storey building devoted to books, that includes three cafes to lounge in, including one on the terrace, amid breezes and bougainvillaea, and another in an enormous garden below, under sprawling mango trees, that also doubles up as a space for events. Mumbai can only fantasise about a bookstore like that, with exquisite taste in books (I got a cool graphic novel on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) and stylish display, that is so spacious, joyous and loungey, you just don't want to leave. Imagine a city space teeming with readers of all ages, bonding over literature — so civilised.
Daroon!
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com.
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