The Importance of February 21st to Me

By Proggattom Progga:

February 21st traces back to the 1952 Bengali Language Movement in what was then East Pakistan. At the time, the government declared Urdu the sole national language, even though the majority of the population spoke Bengali. Students at the University of Dhaka protested this decision, demanding that their mother tongue be recognized. On February 21, police opened fire on the protesters, killing several students who were advocating for their right to speak their own language. Their deaths turned language into a symbol of resistance, identity, and political freedom. Decades later, UNESCO recognized February 21st as International Mother Language Day to honor those sacrifices and to emphasize that language is not just a tool for communication, but a fundamental human right.
February 21st is recognized around the world as International Mother Language Day, a day meant to honor linguistic diversity and the right to speak one’s native language. While it commemorates the sacrifices made by students in Bangladesh who fought for the recognition of Bengali, its importance extends far beyond history books. For me, February 21st represents not just the preservation of language, but the complicated, imperfect ways language survives within people, especially those caught between cultures.
Before I entered pre-K, Bengali was the only language I knew how to speak. It was the language of my home, my parents, and my earliest memories. Years later, after returning from a trip to Bangladesh when I was eight, I assumed that my relationship with Bengali would stay the same. It did not disappear, but it changed. The language itself was never drowned out, yet my pronunciation slowly faded, and speaking became less instinctive. Even now, only two years after my most recent visit to Bangladesh, I find it difficult to speak Bengali with the same ease I once had. I did not lose my language all at once; I lost it in pauses, mispronunciations, and moments where the right word comes too late.
One of the moments where this loss becomes most visible is when I try to translate formal documents for my parents. I learned Bengali in a way that was informal and conversational, shaped by family and familiarity rather than education. As a result, I struggle to find professional or official vocabulary, even when I understand the meaning. In those moments, I feel younger than I am, like a third grader trying to explain adult responsibilities. This gap reminds me that language is not just about speaking, but about access, fluency, and power.
Although I can speak Bengali fairly well, I cannot read or write it at all. No matter how many times I have tried to understand the script, it never sticks. Bengali was passed down to me through conversation, not textbooks. Because of that, I feel connected to the language emotionally, yet disconnected from it formally. Seeing Bengali written on a page makes me feel like an outsider to something that is supposed to belong to me. This experience has taught me that language can survive orally, even when parts of it remain inaccessible, and that preservation does not always look complete or perfect.
Despite these struggles, Bengali continues to connect me to others. When I meet Bengali friends or even strangers from my generation, a simple exchange, “You speak Bengali?” is enough to establish familiarity. There are dialects I do not fully understand and pronunciations that differ from mine, yet the connection remains. Our shared language holds history, culture, and memory, even when mutual understanding is imperfect. This shared recognition reflects the deeper meaning of February 21st: language is not only about clarity, but about belonging.
February 21st is important because it acknowledges that language is worth protecting, not just in its most polished form, but in all the ways it lives within people. My relationship with Bengali is incomplete, flawed, and sometimes frustrating, yet it still ties me to my family, my culture, and my history. In honoring February 21st, I recognize that speaking imperfectly is still an act of preservation, and that even fragmented language carries the weight of identity.