The Immortal 21st February

February 21 is the International Mother Tongue Day as declared by the United Nations in recognition of the martyrs of the language movement who fell to the Pakistani police’s bullets on that day in 1952 in Dhaka while demanding that their mother tongue, Bangla, be made the official language of East Pakistan. Remembering the February 21 martyrs on the sixtyfifth anniversary of the language movement, we are publishing the following poem by a distinguished Bangladeshi poet. This was translated by Pritish Nandy and included in a booklet Poems from Bangladesh (published by Perspective Publications, New Delhi in June 1971).

Those whom we have lost

will never really disappear from within our hearts

for they have stolen all our peace.

These lost ones have opened our hearts,

they have scattered the sparks of their lives

in each corner of this land

though they themselves have been drowned

in the darkness of death.

O my mother living in the slums,

you can forget the death of many children

when you hold one living child to your heart.

In the same way, mother, we forgot

the loss of those fifty martyrs who were our own brothers

when we found you: because we realised,

O mother, what you desire.

Hasan Hafizur Rahman