How to 'Save' my language

Anytime I see the status of Bangla as the seventh most spoken language in the world—I feel very proud. Can you believe that our language is number seven out of 7100 plus languages in the world? Not only that, the Unesco declared 21 February as the International Mother Language Day in 1999, thus  recognising our fight against the Pakistani rulers back in 1952 over the recognition of our mother tongue.

From zero usage in official tasks, we now have widespread usage of Bangla in official tasks in Bangladesh and Paschim Banga. We have a month-long book fair and many activities surrounding the month of February—the month of language. 

But why do I feel that despite Bangla being the seventh most spoken language in the world— the language does not wield the cultural power it used to enjoy in the past? Compared to the cultural or soft power influence of the bigger spoken languages like English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French and Arabic, where does Bangla stand? Why do Japanese and Korean languages have a larger cultural influence around the world compared to Bangla?

The English language thrived around the world because Britain colonised a large number of countries. It's the same for the Spanish and French languages. But colonies are now matters of the past. English binds the world not just as the most used international communication language, but also as the most used language in cinemas, music, art, comics, books, fashion and all cultural activities.

The same is true for Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, French, Japanese or Korean languages—all of these languages are present in all contemporary fashion, aesthetics, cinemas, music, books, comics, and any other forms of artistic expression. The Arabic language may not have so many internationally popular cinemas, music, books or artwork—but it has immense religious appeal. And the Arabic language still has way better movies than we have in Bangla today.

The problem with today's Bangla usage in Bangladesh is that while we have book fairs, we do not have that many powerful writers. We do not have good films. We do not have movie theatres. We do not have concert halls. We do not have new musicians rocking the nation. We do not dance. We do not express our joy. We do not laugh.

Today's Bangla is timid with the fear of people who hate creativity and joy.

If there is a Bangla New Year celebration through colourful procession—militant groups want to bomb it because they think it's "anti-Islamic"! People in this country were killed in Ramna Batamul and in Jessore because they were singing!!

As a cartoonist, I run a few social media pages for my comics. One day, this guy messaged me: drawing is a sin. I replied to him asking where he learned this from? He gave me a youtube link of a mullah narrating his version of Islam. So I asked him if he read the holy book himself or if he relied on people like him. I am sure my arguments did not make him change his corrupted views, because I am not a preacher.

And when militants target writers for writing progressive content, how do you expect thought-provoking good books?

Threats aside, our society has failed to encourage or generate good fiction writers. Plus our readers have been gradually losing their attention span to 15-second video shorts and many of them today are unable to read longer content—be it a book or a cinema.

As a society, we have not been promoting good cultural content.

We left our music world to Hindi, English or even Korean music; because good local Bangla musicians do not feel encouraged to make a living from making and selling their music. There is not much pay. Our last good music was created almost two decades ago when making music paid off.

The same thing happened to our cinemas. Political goons took over the legacy cinema distribution system and stole the money from ticket sales—thus imposing huge losses on the producers. So today, only the daring ones produce their films. The number of film productions fell drastically and the cinema halls disappeared accordingly.

I say, Bangla may be the seventh most spoken language—but it lost its powers to cultural corruption. The usage of Bangla in official works does not make it strong. Usage of the language in cultural content is where we should focus. Or else we are an unhappy and brain-dead language.