The concepts of nation, race, religion, caste and political ideals have always divided people, who are all children of Mother Earth. Our true Motherland is Mother Earth. We are all one family. But we all speak over 6,000 languages. The day when we can all speak, read and write, in a universal language using a universal script, or have access to simultaneous translations remains a far off dream.
Until then, on February 21 we celebrate the International Mother Language Day. I have always maintained that it is only Bangladesh who can really celebrate a Mother Language Day, because the entire country joined as one for the struggle to gain independence for their Motherland, sacrificing many lives in the process. Their effort did not go waste as today, about 98 percent of the people in Bangladesh speak their mother tongue, Bangla. This year to celebrate the Mother Language Day and in honour of the Bangla language, I wish to highlight why we in Sri Lanka need to learn Bangla which is so close to the Sinhala language.
Bengali language
Bengali language, Bengali or Bangla, is a member of the Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the state language of Bangladesh and one of the languages officially recognised in the constitution of India. According to the Cornell University Asian Study page, “ In multi-linguistic South Asia, Bengali is the language of two nations, India and Bangladesh. With about 220 million native and about 250 million speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages, ranked seventh in the world…..For those interested in economics, employment and labour rights, nutritional sciences and development sociology knowing Bengali gives an advantage.” Consequently, anyone considering a global career in health care, government service, law, business or a discipline where communicating with other people is important will find Bengali a great resource.
This is why learning of the Bangla language would be useful for those who are interested in higher education, business, and industry. Among the many students seeking higher education overseas who join Bangladesh medical colleges, would find it useful as they can study in English, but also be able to converse with patients during their clinical practice, as opposed to countries like Russia and China, where the students have to first learn the language of the specific country before they embark on their studies in the chosen field.
Moreover, in the recent past Bangladesh has been a very popular destination for Sri Lankans to seek employment in the garment factories and other export industries. For those seeking employment especially in the supervisory and management grades, a knowledge of the language used by over 90 percent of the employees would be of immense advantage and beneficial for all concerned.
Gitanjali
In addition, one of the most important reasons for us to learn Bangla is because even after 122 years after publication, we have not been able to read Gitanjali. It is sad that we have no choice except to read a translation of a translation of Gitanjali in the form of a Sinhala translation of the English prose translation by Gurudev Rabindranath. As a result we have today seven such Sinhala translations of Gitanjali. It is only now that Prof. Upul Ranjith Hevavithanagamage has undertaken a translation from the original. The first verse from the original Gitanjali (which had not been included by Rabindranath in his translation), is published in the CCIS publication, ‘One Hundred years of Gitanjali’, which should convince us of the need to translate all Rabindragita direct from Bangla as the English translations have not always been faithful to the original.
An example is Partha Pratim Ray’s study of the different editions of Gitanjali. Ray, who is a librarian at the Institute of Education, Visva-Bharati observes, whereas the first publication of the Gitanjali in Bengali in September 1910 contained 157 songs and poems the English translation had only 103 poems. Of these 103, only 53 were from the original Bengali Gitanjali.
Prof. Martin Kampchen, in his keynote address at the 2016 conference in Colombo, ‘Revisiting Rabindranath Tagore’s legacy’, said that finally Tagore had arrived in Germany, through the translations from original Bangla to German. But, Mahakavi Rabindranath has not yet arrived in Sri Lanka, even though he came to Sri Lanka three times and we have so much in common between our two cultures and our languages.
Similarly, we have not had an opportunity to read Jibanananda Das, whose “lyricism is unparalleled in Bengali literature...While he is best known for poetry that reveals a deep love of nature and rural landscapes, tradition and history, ...He was a master of word-images, and his unique poetic idiom drew on tradition but was startlingly new,” wrote Chidananda Dasgupta in his introduction to the translation of Jibananda’s poems. There are many other great Bengali writers and poets we could translate into Sinhala, while Bengali translators could render the works of our great writers in Sinhala to Bangla, to bring the dream of Rabindranath’s Vishva Sahitya closer to reality.
Another interesting fact about Bangla is that it is a language that owes its origin to the works of bhikkhus who wrote poetry in lyrical verses in a language spoken by the common folk. As a result, Bangladesh is rooted to an age-old Buddhist culture and civilisation. And Buddhist culture, has now become an integral part of the national heritage of Bangladesh, says Prof. Bulbul Ahmed. Buddhism in Bangladesh is depicted in Charyapada or Charyagiti (Buddhist mystic songs) (Charya poems), known as Bauddha Gan O Doha, universally acclaimed and established as the earliest work in Bangla literature dated between the 7th and 11th Centuries AD. If we could read them in Sinhala, they could add to our knowledge of the Buddhist heritage in Bangladesh, because over a millennium ago, Buddhism emerged in Bangladesh as the dominant religion of the masses and exercised a profound influence on the social, cultural and intellectual lives of the people.
Revival
With my limited knowledge of Bengal, I still believe that it would have been the pioneering efforts of reviving the Bangla language that led to the struggle for independence and the creation of Bangladesh as a nation. It is the new and simpler Bangla language that would have made it so popular.
Popular enough to have 98 percent of the people of Bangladesh considering Bangla as their mother tongue. The only country perhaps in the world that fought as one nation to protect their country and their language. Had Bengali been what it was before Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, many people would have drifted away into Hindi or Urudu, and Bangladesh would never have become a reality.
Learning Bangla would be very easy for us, because as our linguists could confirm there are so many similarities in our languages. It is also confirmed by the many bhikkhus from Bangladesh who are studying here, who have become very fluent in Sinhala within a very short time.
If they could learn Sinhala we too could learn Bangla equally easily. Learning a language today is not difficult, with access to language teaching facilities available free on internet, which would open the doors of the vast Bangla Sahitya to us.