Language Controversy of Bangladesh Liberation War

In 1948, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's first Governor-General, declared in Dhaka (then usually spelled Dacca in English) that "Urdu, and only Urdu" would be the common language for all of Pakistan. This proved highly controversial, since Urdu was a language that was only spoken in the West by Muhajirs and in the East by Biharis, although the Urdu language had been promoted as the lingua franca of Indian Muslims by political and religious leaders such as Sir Khwaja Salimullah, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk and Maulvi Abdul Haq. The language was considered a vital element of the Islamic culture for Indian Muslims; Hindi and the Devanagari script were seen as fundamentals of Hindu culture. 

The majority groups in the western wing of the Dominion of Pakistan (provinces, states and tribal areas merged in 1956 as West Pakistan) spoke Punjabi, while the Bengali language was spoken by the vast majority of East Bengalis (from 1956, East Pakistan). The language controversy eventually reached a point where East Bengal revolted while the other part of Pakistan remained calm even though Punjabi was spoken by the majority of the population of the western wing. Several students and civilians lost their lives in a police crackdown on 21 February 1952. The day is revered in Bangladesh and in West Bengal as the Language Martyrs' Day. Later, in memory of the 1952 deaths,UNESCO declared 21 February as the International Mother Language Day in 1999.

In the western wing, the movement was seen as a sectional uprising against Pakistani national interest’s and the founding ideology of Pakistan, the Two-Nation Theory. West Pakistani politicians considered Urdu a product of Indian Islamic culture, as Ayub Khan said, as late as 1967, "East Pakistanis... still are under considerable Hindu culture and influence." However, the deaths led to bitter feelings among East Bengalis, and they were a major factor in the push for independence in 1971