As world celebrated International Mother Language Day today, Dipak Kumar Sen, the founder of the oldest little magazine of Dhanbad Shilpey Anonyya, released a special edition of the magazine titled, Amar Ekushe to mark the occasion.
The 32-page special edition, priced at Rs 20, comprises 16 compositions altogether, including six poetries and 10 articles including the article of Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury, a former army officer of Bangladesh who took part in the freedom struggle of Bangladesh and the language movement.
Talking to The Telegraph Online today, Sen, a retired head of the department of RS More College, Govidpur said, “The special edition of the magazine released today during a function of Bengali Welfare Society, was brought on special demand of the readers. We also published the articles of local writers including Arup Kumar Maity, Manoj Majumdar, and Basudev Banerjee besides the articles of writers of other parts of the country and abroad.
“We have also reprinted two of famous articles from our 21st edition including one article of Late Kundendu Mukhopadhyay of Patna and one of Shukla Sengupta of Alipore which are relevant for the present edition,” said Sen and added that they had started inviting articles for the special edition about a fortnight ago.
"For the knowledge of the readers, we have also published the brief history of International Language Day which is celebrated every year on February 21 in recognition of the language movement carried out by Bangladeshis," he said.
He elaborated that in 1948 the government of Pakistan declared Urdu to be the sole national language of Pakistan. The East Pakistani people protested and demanded Bangla to be at least one language. Though the government of Pakistan outlawed meetings and public rallies, the students of Dhaka University took out massive rallies and meetings. “On February 21, 1952, police opened fire on the protesters, during which five persons were killed,” said Sen and added that February 21 was declared International Mother Language Day by UNESCO in 1999.
“Though the regular edition of the quarterly magazine for January to March will be published next month, the special edition was taken out today as the mother language is the soul of our magazine, which is published in Bangla,” further said Sen.
Notably, Sengupta started publishing the little magazine titled Aami Ananya in 1977, but its name changed to Shilpey Anonyya after securing the RNI registration last year.
