BhashaAndolan - A Precursor to the 1971 war of Liberation Sun Online Desk 19th February, 2021 06:30:52 The first major conflict between erstwhile East and West Pakistan occurred over language and February 21 is a milestone in that struggle. This date is commemorated worldwide as International Mother Language Day, and draws its significance from the ‘BhashaAndolon’ or language movement in which the people of erstwhile East Pakistan were demanding equal status for the Bengali language. The BashaAndolan was the culmination of systematic negation and nullification of the ‘Bengali’ language the regional identity of Bengal. Nearly 98% of the population, and virtually 100% of the urbanized, educated population, in East Pakistan comprised a single ethnic group of Bengalis, constituting about 55% of Pakistan’s overall population. Despite this the central government of Pakistan started the unilateral use of Urdu in moneyorder forms, postal stamps, currencies, coins, railway tickets and officialletterheads even without formally adopting Urdu as state language. This policy was unpopular in both sections of Pakistan, because it seemed that Urdu-speakers, an intellectual elite, and population minority, were implicitly declaring their culture as superior to all others. The decision by the government in West Pakistan to make Urdu the official language of Pakistan was vehemently opposed by the members of the ‘TamaddunMajlish’ which was organized by professors and students of Dhaka University under the leadership of Professor AbulKashem in September 1947, first ever to convene a literary meeting to discuss the issue of national language. Representing a unified platform of resistance against the Urdu single-language proposal, students and intellectuals of East Pakistan resisted and demanded that Bengali should also be made as one of the State languages and the medium of instruction in East Pakistan along with Urdu.The cultural domination of one ethnic group was deeply resented.
By Murtaza Ali Shah LONDON: One of the architects of the Assets Recovery Agreement (ARA) between the Broadsheet LLC and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) said his role was only that of a “post office” between the two parties and nothing more. Tariq Fawad Malik, who currently lives in Dubai and runs businesses from there, is considered the main character of the Broadsheet deal among Gen Amjad, Farouk Adam Khan, Jerry James and Dr William Pepper. General Amjad told Sir Anthony Evans that it was Tariq Fawad Malik – known also as TFM – who came to him with Ghaznafar Ali Khan for the first time to pitch the idea of recovering the alleged stolen billion from abroad through the so-called assets recovery firm Trouvons LLC.
Top Story February 4, 2021 LONDON: One of the architects of the Assets Recovery Agreement (ARA) between the Broadsheet LLC and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) said his role was only that of a “post office” between the two parties and nothing more. Tariq Fawad Malik, who currently lives in Dubai and runs businesses from there, is considered the main character of the Broadsheet deal among General Amjad, Farouk Adam Khan, Jerry James and Dr William Pepper. General Amjad told Sir Anthony Evans that it was Tariq Fawad Malik – known also as TFM – who came to him with Ghaznafar Ali Khan for the first time to pitch the idea of recovering the alleged stolen billion from abroad through the so-called assets recovery firm Trouvons LLC.