Bengali–Arabic script

Bengali-Arabic script^[1][2] refers to Bangla language writing method through a modified Arabic-script, terming it as "Hurful Quran" ^[1] as in the "script of the Quran". In Nawabi period of Bengal, this method of writing was prevalent in a vast form called Dobhashi. After the partition of India, in East Bengal or East Pakistan, this writing system was again discussed politically.^[3][4][5]

History

in Nawabi Bengali

See the main article: Dobhashi

During the Nawabi period of Bengal, the system of writing was prevalent among Muslim Puthi writers, almost all Muslim Bengali Puthi writers followed this writing system, including some Hindu writers, whom Iswarchandra Vidyasagar at Fort William College in 1818 introduced the present Bengali alphabet system. At the time of doing this, the interpreter named Puthi or Battala Puthi.^[6] And 72 puthis have been found written following the contemporary style, including Alaol's Padmavati,^[7] Yusuf-Zulekha of Shah Muhammad Sagir,^[8] Hayrat al-Fiqh by Muhammad Ali,^[9] মুহাম্মদ ফাসিহ^[10] etc. Some of these specimens are also preserved in Gallery-33 (Manuscripts and Documents) of the Bangladesh National Museum including Sheikh Muttalib's "Kefayatul Musallin".^[11] and Muhammad Khan's "Maqtul Husain" (1645).^[12] There are thousands of such interpreters in various archive buildings, DU libraries, Barendra Museum. Sheikh Muttalib made this statement in the preface to his book Kefayat al-Musallin: I am aware of the fact that I am committing an infinite sin in writing about Islam in Bengali.^[13][14]

After 1947, during the rule of New Pakistan

Ever since the formation of Pakistan, the introduction of Arabic script in Bengali language in the new Pakistan had religious sentiments on the one hand and state unity on the other. It was said that apart from Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Punjabi language as the Arabic alphabet is being used — Solidarity will be strong. The main initiator was the Union Education Secretary or Education Minister Fazlur Rahman.^[15] In this regard, he tried to get the cooperation of the educators of East Bengal. The proposal was made by the Education Secretary at the All Pakistan Education Conference in Karachi in 1948. A meeting of the Central Education Advisory Board in Peshawar in 1949 also strongly recommended that Arabic be the only alphabet in Pakistani languages. Fazlur Rahman, speaking at the second session of the Pakistan Education Advisory Board in Peshawar on 12 February 1949, said that one of the difficulties in developing the same national vision was the problem of different fonts. In this context, he described the usefulness of the Arabic alphabet. Although the language movement of March 1948 came to a standstill, the reaction and resistance in East Pakistan against the introduction of Government of Pakistan continued. In the last week of February 1949, the students of Bangla Department of Dhaka University protested against the attempt to introduce Arabic alphabet in a meeting. It was presided over by Mustafa Nurul Islam. At this meeting a parliament was formed with the students of Bangla department. Md. Nurul Islam was elected president and Ila Dasgupta and Ashraf Siddiqui joint-general secretaries. Besides, alphabet sub-committee was formed with Nazrul Islam, Mumtaz Begum, Rizia Khatun, Khalilur Rahman and others. Meanwhile, on the second day of the budget session on March 12, 1949, a protest march of the student federation was stopped by the police when they tried to march in front of the council building and police arrested Afzal Hossain, Mrinalkanti Barri, Bahauddin Chowdhury, Iqbal Ansari Khan, Abdus Salam and AKM Moniruzzaman Chowdhury. They were held captive without bail. In the first week of April 1949, Naimuddin Ahmed, on behalf of the Language Committee of the East Pakistan Muslim Chhatra League, said in a statement to the press: "The literacy rate in East Pakistan is 12 to 15 per cent. Attempts are being made to turn the educated into illiterate with the stroke of a pen. As a result, the entire education system of East Pakistan will be ruined."^[16] In the 1950s, the East Bengal Language Committee was formed under the leadership of Maulana Akram Khan to get a detailed explanation of the language problem from the East Bengal government and was asked to prepare a report on the subject. As part of the project, in 1950 they set up 20 centers for teaching Bengali in Arabic script in different districts of East Bengal.^[17] The committee prepared their report by December 6, 1950. However, it was not published before 1958. Here an effective measure is proposed by the government to solve the language problem. Where they recommended writing Bengali in Arabic script.^[18] When the proposal to write Bangla in Arabic script was tabled in the Constituent Assembly in 1950, Dhirendranath Datta protested and proposed to give Bengali language equal status with other languages of the Pak-assembly.^[19]

On 26 March 1951, the Government of Pakistan re-introduced the proposal to write Bangla in Arabic script in the CAP and pressed for the replacement of Arabic script for Bengal. Among the few other MLAs in East Bengal, Dhirendranath Dutta sharply criticized the plan to change Bengali, saying that the people of East Bengal were being turned into illiterate people by introducing foreign scripts to write Bengali. He vehemently opposed the proposal to replace the Arabic script for the Bengali alphabet. When the same proposal to adopt Arabic script for writing Bengali was formally discussed in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan (CAP) in April 1950, he spoke in favor of Bengali. In particular, he demanded the immediate rejection of the decision to introduce Arabic script instead of the Bengali alphabet and called upon the government to immediately adopt Bengali as one of the state languages of Pakistan. Dhirendranath Dutt emphasized on the CAP floor: "I represent not only Hindus but also the Mussalmans. I can tell you that the ordinary people will not understand the language (i.e. Arabic) that is sought to be introduced in Eastern Bengal. That policy shall have to be changed. I do not know whether the Government is aware of this fact that amongst the large sections of the people and especially among younger generation there is a demand made in a certain conference that the Bengali language should be made one of the State languages of Pakistan."^[20]

Dutta criticized this during the discussion of the budget of the Parliament session on April 30, 1953, "Then Sir, there is another matter to which I shall refer to. I want to be brief because the Honourable Minister for Information and Broadcasting has entertained us with a cinema at the "Paradise" and has asked me not to criticise much! I must respect his wish, but an other matter that has been referred to is the teaching of Bengali through the Arabic script. The Honourable Minister for Commerce, who was sometime before the Minister for Education, told this House that this is very popular in East Bengal but it is not. If we make an inquiry into the matter it will be found that really it is extremely unpopular and that no one in East Bengal wants that Bengali script should be done away with and Bengali teaching should be made in the Arabic script, but, Sir, the Government wish to pursue this matter and that shows Sir, the undemocratic spirit of the Government..^[21] Sulaiman Nadvi was brought to a seminar in Dhaka University in 1953, where he advocated this language policy. The students beat him up while leaving after the speech. At that time Muhammad Shahidullah, Syed Ali Ahsan etc. protected him from the wrath of the students.

Criticism

Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi said, this decision to remove the writing system of Bengali language from Arabic letters to Sanskrit letters was extremely suicidal for the religious entity of Muslims in the region. As a result of this decision, a large population of this region became 'alien' from the vast knowledge-store of Islamic knowledge and science written in Arabic script. According to him, similar plans were made for the Turkish language. He said that the Turkish language, which was written in Arabic script for thousands of years, due to Kemalism, the writing style of that language was changed from Arabic script to Roman/English script, thus alienating the large Muslim population from their thousand years of glorious history-traditio and thousands of years of Islamic knowledge.

In Zia's regime

In his regime after assassination of Sheikh Mujib, Ziaur Rahman was droved by the anxiety to invoke a 'national personality' free of the cultural association with the neighbouring Bengal towards adopting certain hegemonic measures. To remould the language, history and culture of Bangladesh, particularly so in language, efforts were made to infest the Bengali language with words from Persian and Arabic vocabulary-measures to revive the Do-bhasha (bi-language) or the artificial measures to create "Pak-Bangla" language of post-partition period as described by Abul Mansur Ahmed.^[22] Thus, the slogan "Joy Bangla"- linguistically of Sanskritic and Bengali origin was replaced with the more Persianised "Bangladesh Zindabad".^[23]

Sample

The following is a sample text in Dobhashi Bengali of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations:

Dobhashi Bengali in the Bengali script

দফা ১: তামাম ইনসান আজ়াদ হইয়া সমান ইজ্জত আর হক লইয়া পয়দা হয়। তাঁহাদের হুঁশ ও আকল আছে; তাই একজন আরেক জনের সাথে বেরাদর হিসাবে সুলূক করা জ়রূরী।

Dobhashi Bengali in a modified Arabic script^{[24][25][26][27]}

دفا ١: تَمام انسان آزاد ھئیا شمان عِزّت ار حقّ لئیا پیدا ھي۔ تاهَدِر ھوش و عَقل اچھے؛ تايئ ايكجن ارِك جنِر شاتھے بِرادر حِشابے سُلوك كرا ضروري۔

Dobhashi Bengali in phonetic Romanization

dôfa ek: Tamam insan azad hôiya shôman izzôt ar hôq lôiya pôyda hôy. Tãhader hũsh o aqôl achhe; tai ekjôn arek jôner shathe beradôr hishabe sulūk kôra zorūrī.

Gloss

Point 1: All humans free manner-in equal dignity and right taken birth be. Their conscience and intelligence exist; thus one-person another person's with brother as behaviour do important.

English Translation

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They possess conscience and reason. Therefore, everyone should act in a spirit of brotherhood towards each other.

See also

• Bengali-Assamese script

References

1. Hossain, Mokerrom (21 February 2010). From Protest to Freedom: A Book for the New Generation: the Birth of Bangladesh. Mokerrom. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-615-48695-6. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
2. রহিম, মোঃ আব্দুর (2 February 2020). "রাজনৈতিক ও জাতিগত বিভাজনের ভাষা উর্দু". Samakal. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
3. Jaffrelot, Christophe (28 September 2004). A History of Pakistan and Its Origins. Anthem Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-84331-149-2. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
4. Ahmed, Salahuddin (2004). Bangladesh: Past and Present. APH Publishing. p. 136. ISBN 978-81-7648-469-5. Retrieved 1 May 2022. People of East Bengal are proud of their language, Bengali. Soon after the establishment of Pakistan, the Central Government took some steps to limit its importance as a provincial language. With a view to halt its growth as a vibrant language, the government attempted to introduce the Arabic script in Bengali language. Shahidullah, a renowned scholar and a linguist, deprecated and denounced this heinous attempt in strong terms." As early on 23 February, 1948, Dhirendranath Datta (d. 1971) a member of the Constituent Assembly brought a motion in the Assembly, demanding Bengali as one of the state languages of the country. He said: "The state language should be the language which is used by the majority of the people of the state, and for that, Sir, I consider that Bengali language is a lingua franca of our State." Promptly opposing the motion, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, brought a vague allegation that the member was trying "to create misunderstanding between the different parts of Pakistan." He further said: "Pakistan has been created because of the demand of a hundred million Muslims in the subcontinent and the language of a hundred million Muslims is Urdu and, therefore, it is wrong for him now to try and create the situation that as the majority of the people of Pakistan belongs to one part of Pakistan, therefore the language which is spoken there should become the state language of Pakistan. Pakistan is a Muslim State and it must have as its lingua franca the language of the Muslim nation."
5. Murshid, Ghulam (25 January 2018). Bengali Culture Over a Thousand Years. Niyogi Books. ISBN 978-93-86906-12-0. Retrieved 1 May 2022. Indeed, though almost all Bengali Muslims had welcomed the formation of Pakistan, disenchantment soon set in because of a number of reasons. They could see neglect of Bengali and patronage for Urdu in government affairs. On money order forms, postal stamps, coins, in a word in all government transactions, Urdu was being used along with English, not Bengall. They also found themselves unable to put up with the proposal of using Arabic script for Bengali and the import of unknown and unfamiliar Arabic and Farsi words in the language, Nor did they receive just treatment from the Centre in economic matters. And they did not have any say in the administration of Pakistan. All this, together, made them resentful. But it was the question of language, rather than economic unfairness, that first stoked resentment among Bengali-speaking Muslims, Political conflict on the language issue started at the beginning of 1948. In February that year. Dhirendranath Datta proposed in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan that Bengali be made one of the official languages of Pakistan. The proposal was scuttled because of opposition from the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Once the information became public through the media, however, a controversy could not be averted. Even a nationalist newspaper like Azad published a number of arguments in favour of Dhirendranath Datta's proposal. An editorial was published criticising Liaquat Ali Khan.
6. Journal of the Asiatic Society. Asiatic Society. 1961. It is noticed that a good number of manuscripts of Bengali texts are written in the Arabic script . Among the scribes there are a number of Hindus . We have records here showing that Muislim authors writing on Islamic topics were patronized by Hindu landlords . The dates of copying given in the manuscripts refer to different eras and are indicated in the traditional Hindu fashion with word numerals...
7. Haq, Muhammad Enamul (1957). Muslim Bengali Literature. Pakistan Publications. p. 40. Retrieved 3 May 2022. Though we have no evidence of any Bengali book in Arabic script until 1852 , it is a well - known fact that the manuscript of Alaol's Padmavati which is in the Arabic script is about one hundred and fifty years old .
8. "1948 | আরবি হরফে বাংলা লেখার ষড়যন্ত্র". সংগ্রামের নোটবুক. Songramer notebook. 24 March 2019. Retrieved 2 May 2022.
9. Roy, Asim (14 July 2014). The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal. Princeton University Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-4008-5670-1. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
10. Khan, Akbar Ali (1996). Discovery of Bangladesh: Explorations Into Dynamics of a Hidden Nation. University Press Limited. p. 18. ISBN 978-984-05-1371-0. Retrieved 3 May 2022. Finally, a few writers like Muhammad Fasih (17th century) wrote Bengali in the Arabic script hoping that this would be more acceptable to Allah (Hoq, 1957, p.215)
11. Ekāḍemī (Bangladesh), Bāṃlā (1995). Bāṃlā Ekāḍemī pun̐thi paricaẏa (in Bengali). Bāṃlā Ekāḍemī. p. 199. ISBN 978-984-07-3173-2. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
12. Eaton, Richard Maxwell; Eaton, Professor Richard M. (1993). The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760. University of California Press. p. 294. ISBN 978-0-520-08077-5. The Dhaka Museum has a manuscript work composed in 1645 entitled Maqtul Husain-a tract treating the death of Husain at Karbala written in Bengali but using the Arabic, and not the Bengali, script." Al though subsequent writers made similar such literary attempts, it is sig nificant that the effort never took hold, with the result that Bengali Mus lims remain today the world's largest body of Muslims who, despite Islamization, have retained both their language and their script."
13. Roy, Asim (en). The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal. Princeton University Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-4008-5670-1. Retrieved 4 May 2022. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |DUPLICATE_date= ignored (help)
14. Template:Cite boom
15. Alam, S. M. Shamsul (29 April 2016). Governmentality and Counter-Hegemony in Bangladesh. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-52603-8. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
16. "আরবি হরফ চালুর মূল উদ্দেশ্য ছিল জাতিকে পঙ্গু করে দেওয়া". The Daily Ittefaq. 8 February 2021. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
17. "বাংলা হরফের ওপর শয়তানি আছর". banglanews24.com (in Bengali). 20 February 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
18. "আরবি হরফে বাংলা লেখার সুপারিশ ভাষা কমিটির". Bhorer Kagoj. 9 February 2019. Archived from the original on 26 December 2019. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
19. "ভাষা আন্দোলনের সেকাল একাল". jagonews24.com (in Bengali). 2 February 2021. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
20. Manik, M. Waheeduzzaman (21 February 2014). "Shaheed dhirendranath dutta". The Daily Star. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
21. Legislature, Pakistan Constituent Assembly (1947-1954) (1953). The Constituent Assembly (Legislature) of Pakistan Debate: Official Report. Manager of Publications. p. 939. Retrieved 1 May 2022. Then Sir, there is another matter to which I shall refer to. I want to be brief because the Honourable Minister for Information and Broadcasting has entertained us with a cinema at the "Paradise" and has asked me not to criticise much! I must respect his wish, but an other matter that has been referred to is the teaching of Bengali through the Arabic script. The Honourable Minister for Commerce, who was sometime before the Minister for Education, told this House that this is very popular in East Bengal but it is not. If we make an inquiry into the matter it will be found that really it is extremely unpopular and that no one in East Bengal wants that Bengali script should be done away with and Bengali teaching should be made in the Arabic script, but, Sir, the Government wish to pursue this matter and that shows Sir, the undemocratic spirit of the Government.
22. NA, NA (27 September 2016). The Post-Colonial States of South Asia: Democracy, Development and Identity. Springer. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-137-11508-9. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
23. Sharma, S. L.; Oommen, T. K. (2000). Nation and National Identity in South Asia. Orient Blackswan. p. 194. ISBN 978-81-250-1924-4. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
24. Shakti, Shamsul Arefin (2024). "আরবি হরফে বাংলা লিখন (Writing Bengali in the Arabic Script)".
25. "Session 5: Reading Bengali manuscripts in Arabic script: "The story of the Goldsmith's Wife" (part 2)". 2016.
26. d'Hubert, Thibaut (2019). "The University of Chicago: "Bengali Manuscripts in Arabic: Early Paleography and Codicology Texts Workshop #5"".
27. d'Hubert, Thibaut (2020). "Bhabonogor: Peer-reviewed international journal of Bengal studies". "দেশি বচনের বিস্মৃত পাঠ: আরবি হরফে বাংলা হস্তলিখিত পাণ্ডলিপি" (ভাবনগর, ২০২০). 12 (13–14).