Though the movement for Bangla as one of the state languages in the then Pakistan is recognized as the only language movement in the world, in reality, the vehementmovement demanding Bangla as the State Language of Assam in India was waged in 1960.
TenBangalee youths and a young woman had sacrificed their lives in the bloodshed when police opened fireon the agitators at Shilchar Railway station of Assam on May19, 1961.
The martyrs who shed their own blood to establish Bangla as a state language still remain into oblivion and they are yetto be recognised as the Language Martyrs by the state government of Assam.
Though every year during the month of February, International Mother Language Day is observed through various programmes and the martyrs of February 21are remembered with due honour, neither the government of Bangladesh nor any private organisation in the country has ever tried to make any contact with the families of Bangla language martyrs in Assam whose life was cut short in the prime of life or any Bangla language movement organisation of Assam.
As gathered from various sources, the Bengali Language Movement in Barak Valley, Assam was a protest against the decision of the Government of Assam to make Assamese the only official language of the state even though a great chunk of population was Bangalees. In the Barak Valley, the Sylheti-speaking Bengalee population constitute the majority.
The martyrs were identified as KanailalNeogi, ChandicharanSutradharm Hitesh Biswas, Satyendranath Deb, KumudRanjan Das, Sunil Sarkar, TaraniDebnath, Sachindra Chandra Paul, BirendraSutradhar, SukomolPurakaystha, and the only female SukamalBhattarcharjee. The irony of fate is that till today these martyrs have not been accorded the status of martyrs either by the State government of Assam or any step has so far been taken by any organisation of Bangladesh to remember them for the supreme sacrifice they made to establish Bangla as the state language.
As history says, in April 1960, a proposal was raised at the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, to declare Assamese as the one and only official language of the state. Tensions ran high in the Brahmaputra Valley, where mob violence broke out. The violence reached its peak between July and September, during which an estimated 50,000 Bangalees fled the Brahmaputra Valley and arrived in West Bengal. Another 90,000 fled to Barak Valley and other regions of the North East.
A one-man enquiry commission was set up under Justice Gopal Mehrotra. According to the report of the commission, 4,019 huts and 58 houses belonging to Bangalees were vandalized and destroyed in 25 villages of Goreswar in Kamrup district, which was the worst affected area in violence. Nine Bengalees were killed and more than one hundred were injured.
On October 10, 1960, Bimala Prasad Chaliha , the then Chief Minister of Assam presented a bill in the Legislative Assembly that sought to legalize Assamese as the sole official language of the state. Ranendra Mohan Das, the legislator from Karimganj (North) assembly constituency and an
ethnic Bengalee, protested against the bill on the ground that it sought to impose the language of a third of the population over the rest two-thirds. On 24 October, the bill was passed in the Assam legislative assembly.
On 5 February 1961, the CacharGanaSangramParishad was formed to agitate against the imposition of Assamese in the Bengali-speaking Barak Valley. On 14 April, the people
of Silchar, Karimganj and Hailakandi observed a Sankalpa Divas in protest against the injustice of the Assamese government. On 24 April, the Parishad flagged off a fortnight long padayatra in the Barak Valley, in the regions surrounding Silchar and Karimganj to raise awareness among the masses. The satyagrahis who took part in the padayatra walked over 200 miles and covered several
villages. The procession ended on 2 May in Silchar . Later, a similar padayatra was organised in Hailakandi. After the padayatra ,Rathindranath Sen, the Parishad chief declared that if Bengali was not accorded the status of official language by 13 April 1961, a complete hartal would be observed on 19 May from dawn to dusk. The Parishad also called for due recognition of the languages of
other linguistic minorities.
On 12 May, the soldiers of the Assam Rifles, the Madras Regiment and the Central Reserve Police staged flag march in Silchar. On 18 May, the Assam police arrested three prominent leaders of the movement, namely Nalinikanta Das, Rathindranath Sen and Bidhubhushan Chowdhury, the editor of the weekly Yugashakti.
Assam police resorted to lathi charge on the satyagrahis at the Tarapur railway station (now, Silchar railway station ).
On 19 May, the dawn to dusk hartal started. Picketing started in the sub-divisional towns
of Silchar, Karimganj and Hailakandi from dawn. In Karimganj, the agitators picketed in front of government offices, courts and railway station. In Silchar, the agitators picketed at the railway station. At around 2-30 PM, a Bedford truck carrying nine arrested Satyagrahis from Katigorah was passing by the Tarapur railway station (present-day Silchar railway station ). Seeing their fellow activists arrested and being taken away, the Satyagrahis assembled at the railway tracks broke out in loud protests. At that point, the truck driver and the policemen escorting the arrested fled the spot.
Immediately after they fled, an unidentified person set fire to the truck.
Assam government had to withdraw the circular and Bengali was ultimately given official status in the three districts of Barak Valley. Section 5 of Assam Act XVIII, 1961, safeguards the use of Bengali in the Cachar district. It says, “Without prejudice to the provisions
contained in Section 3, the Bengali language shall be used for administrative and other official purposes up to and including district level.”
Silchar railway station is described as BhasaShahid Station.
This massacre is compared with the massacre in Jalianwalabagh or the one in Bangladesh on 21 February 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bengali, as one of the two national languages of then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka
Every year on May 19 is celebrated as BhashaShahid Divas to commemorate those 11 martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the sake of protecting the Bengali language, through various cultural programmes.