During Bangladesh's 'language movement' of 1952, scholar Syed Yusuf Hasan was the first Urdu-speaker to issue a statement supporting Bangla as one of the two state languages of what was then East Pakistan. He was also the only Urdu-speaker to be jailed for supporting the language movement, and for taking part in the protests against atrocities committed by West Pakistani authorities. After almost 60 years, in February this year the 85-year-old Hasan was honoured by the Bangla Academy for his contributions to the language movement. As this institution was set up specifically to promote the Bangla language, the decision by the Bangla Academy to officially honour someone such as Hasan cannot be underestimated.
When the state of Pakistan was created in 1947, its two regions were split along cultural, geographical and linguistic lines. In 1948, the government of Pakistan proclaimed Urdu the sole national language of both East and West Pakistan, which led to mass protests among the Bangla-speaking majority of East Pakistan. After many deaths and arrests, Bangla was eventually recognised as a state language, though only in 1956. Today, the language movement itself is regarded as the precursor to the Bengali nationalist movement, which culminated in Bangladesh's independence following the Liberation War of 1971.
Syed Yusuf Hasan was born on 4 November 1926 in Patna. He studied at the Muslim University of Aligarh in 1943, and obtained a masters degree in arts in 1949 before returning to Patna. While he was in Aligarh, the university campuses were dominated by two movements, one led by the Communist Party and the other by progressive Urdu poets and writers. Hasan, who by this time was regarded as one of the most eminent scholars in the history of Urdu literature, said he was influenced by both. After being encouraged by the renowned Urdu writer Sajjad Zaheer, Hasan left Patna for Dhaka in October 1949. 'I had studied the language problem in Aligarh,' he recalled in a recent interview with this writer, 'and when I came to Dhaka I saw that things weren't moving properly. Everybody loves their mother tongue and I love mine. It was for this reason that I supported the Bangla language movement.'
In his writing, Hasan stressed that Bangla and Urdu should co-exist as the state languages of Pakistan, and that recognition and official support should be provided to all minority languages, such as Sindh. This was very unusual for an Urdu writer. At one stage, Hasan wrote on behalf of the Progressive Writers' Association that if Bangla was not recognised as a state language, the group would alter its demand, to instead call that it become the only state language of Pakistan. This was not mere rhetoric: Hasan believed that it was 'scientific' to demand that Bangla that become one of Pakistan's state languages, as 54 percent of the population at that time spoke Bangla. To him, there was simply no rational alternative.