Pakistan

Unsplash

Language soldier Dhirendranath Dutta's house is demanded to be preserved by the state

In the language movement, Comilla's son Dhirendranath Dutta was the first to propose recognition of Bengali as the state language in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. He protested against the decision not to use Bengali in government papers.

It is known that on February 23, 1948, the session of the Constituent Assembly began in Karachi, Pakistan.

On February 25, Dhirendranath Dutta was the first to voice his demand for making Bengali the national language. He drew the attention of the speaker in the session and said that the minutes written in the Constituent Assembly are recorded in English and Urdu.

56 percent of people in Pakistan speak Bengali. He demanded to use Bengali language along with English and Urdu in the session. Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan at the time, was enraged by this. In this, Dhirendranath fell under the fire of the then Pakistan government and was imprisoned several times.

Dhirendranath was already targeted for playing a role in the language movement. And that's why in the late night of March 29, 1971, Pakistani invasion forces took Dhirendranath Dutt and his son Dilip Kumar Dutt to Comilla Cantonment from this house on the western bank of Dharmasagar in Comilla city. There, the 85-year-old patriotic politician was brutally tortured. Later both father and son were killed. The family did not find their bodies later.

Since then, the infrastructure of this house gradually started to collapse. At present, the memorial house of Bhasha Saiyan Shaheed Dhirendranath Dutt is lying neglected. There is no way to tell by looking at the house now, but once a veteran politician of undivided Pakistan lived here. No initiative has been taken to renovate the house for a long time, thereby depriving the new generation of knowing the true history of the language struggle.