At the Conference, many officials from West Pakistan advocated for a resolution to make Urdu the only national language of Pakistan. In the city of Karachi, government representatives from both West and East Pakistan attended the “Pakistan Educational Conference” called by the Minister of Education in November of 1947 to discuss new educational initiatives in Pakistan. On 15 September 1947, they published a popular booklet called “Pakistaner Rashtro Bhasha Bangla na Urdu?” (Is Pakistan’s State Language Bengali or is it Urdu?) in which they outlined demands for Bengali to become an official language of Pakistan recognizing it as a language of education, court communication, and office communication, and an accepted language of the Central government along with Urdu. Tamaddun Majilish published weekly newsletters about the issue of official language. They met to discuss the the official language of Pakistan and to defend the Bengali language. This group was a collection of scholars, writers, and journalists oriented towards Islamic ideology. Shahidullah continued his support for Bengali as an official language throughout the campaign by writing articles that explicitly stated his support.įollowing the independence of Pakistan, Abul Kashem, Professor of Physics at the University of Dhaka in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, organized the first meeting of Tamaddun Majilish. Shahidullah responded, “Urdu or Hindi instead of Bengali used in our law courts and universities would be tantamount to political slavery.” Dr. Ziauddin Ahmed, former Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh University in India, made the comment that Urdu should become the new state language of future Pakistan, Dr. Muhammad Shahidullah, a respected Bengali linguist and scholar from Dhaka University, is thought to mark the beginning of the Bengali Language Movement. In 1947, before the independence of Pakistan and India, a comment made by Dr. West Pakistan dominated the Pakistani government, military, and civil services after independence while East Pakistan struggled for power. Cultural, linguistic, and ethnic differences were also present between East and West Pakistan. Seventeen hundred miles of India separated the two regions. Pakistan was geographically separated into East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (modern day Pakistan). Large regions that were majority Muslim became Pakistan, and regions that were majority Hindu became India. The British Imperial Government, the Indian Muslim League, and the Indian National Congress split the region based on religious lines of Hinduism and Islam. Pakistan and India became independent from British rule in August of 1947. Language is an important aspect of culture as it communicates and preserves heritage, ideas, and identity.