By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Calcutta
The assembly in India’s West Bengal state has passed a resolution supporting Bangladesh’s call to declare Bengali an official UN language. Earlier in April, Bangladesh’s parliament had adopted a resolution appealing to the UN to declare Bengali as an official language.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had argued in support of the motion in September while addressing the General Assembly.
Bengali is spoken by over 250 million people around the world.
The UN has six official languages - English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic.
English and French are the daily working languages of the organisation, though English is more frequently used than French.
‘Proud’
The West Bengal state assembly adopted a unanimous resolution on Monday supporting Bangladesh’s appeal for declaring Bengali as one of the official languages of the UN.
“Thousands have died for the cause of this language. It is our mother tongue and we are proud of it,” West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya said after the resolution was adopted.
The West Bengal government has now asked the Indian government to forward the appeal to the UN.
But India’s main language Hindi is not one of the UN languages.
“The Bangla bhasha (Bengali language ) is spoken by over 250 million people worldwide, primarily in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal,” Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina had said in an address before the UN General Assembly in September.
“Given the rich heritage of Bangla language, and its singular place as a symbol of people’s faith in the power of languages to sustain cultures, and indeed the identity of nations, I seek support of the membership of the UN General Assembly for its acceptance as an official language of the United Nations,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina requested the West Bengal government and Bengali ministers in the Indian cabinet to “push forward” the case for Bengali.
Support for the plea to declare Bengali as an official language of the UN has come from the Indian states of Assam and Tripura, both of which have a sizeable Bengali-speaking community.
While not widely spoken outside the region, Bengali is the language of famed poet Rabindranath Tagore, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.
Bangladesh observes a language martyrs day on 21 February to remember those who fell to Pakistani bullets on that day in 1952 to push for recognition of Bengali as an official language of Pakistan.
Bengalis in Assam and northeast India observe 19 May as their language martyrs day to remember the 11 Bengalis who were killed in police firing in the southern Assam town of Silchar while fighting for their language rights.