21 February, The International Mother Language Day was declared by UNESCO in 1999. The declaration came up in tribute to the Language Movement done by the Bangladeshi heroes (then the East Pakistanis).
After being created the Pakistan back in 1947, it had two separate geographical part: East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (Pakistan). Which had two different sense of lifestyle, culture, language etc.
IN 1948, the government of Pakistan declared that, Urdu to be the national language of Pakistan even though Bangla/Bengali was spoken by the people of east Pakistan (Bangladesh).
That is why the people of east Pakistan (Bangladesh) argued as the majority people of the population was from east Pakistan (Bangladesh) and their mother language was Bangla. Their demand was that Bangla would be least one of the national languages, in addition to Urdu.
To demolish the protest, the government of Pakistan outlawed public meeting and rallies. The students of the University of Dhaka, with the support of the general public, arranged massive rallies and meetings.
On 21 February 1952, police opened fire on rallies. Salam, Barkat, Rafiq, Jabbar and Shafiur died, with hundreds of others injured. This is a rare incident in history, where people sacrificed their lives for their mother tongue.
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