The cartoon shown above was published in 1950 in the weekly newspaper Sainik of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The cartoon titled Haraf Khedao Abhijan, meaning the mission to exterminate the (Bengali) letters, is an example of earlier political cartoon practices in East Pakistan print media. The cartoon warrants closer attention, as it also became one of the iconic visuals of the Bhasan Andolon, or the language movement, in East Pakistan, reflecting the first major rupture in Pakistan, not only as a state but also as an idea.
Kazi Abul Kasem drew the cartoon under the pseudonym Dopiaza (a popular dish in South Asia), arguably the first Bengali Muslim cartoonist. The cartoon shows the Bengali letters fleeing from the books while a group of men chases them with swords. The cartoon was addressing the Pakistani state’s ongoing attempts to suppress the Bengali language. After 1947, when Bengal was partitioned, and East Bengal became part of Pakistan, the first issue that created a stark division was the question of language. Urdu was declared the state language of Pakistan. Bengalis of East Pakistan demanded that Bengali be recognized as one of the state languages as well, since it was the language of the majority in Pakistan. However, this demand was fiercely rejected by Pakistan’s new ruling class, which was composed mostly of the West Wing. One of the main reasons behind this rejection was that they claimed the Bengali language is neither connected to Pakistan nor Islam. In fact, those who demanded this were accused of conspiring to divide the new country. This ignited the bhasha andolon, the language movement, which began as an intellectual movement debating what it means to be Pakistani. The debates centered on language’s relation with nation, religion and freedom. While the pro-Bengali intellectuals were arguing that the Bengali people and their language were an integral part of the Pakistan movement, the counterargument claimed they were not Pakistani enough. The Bhasha Andolon gradually became a cultural and political movement that mobilized people throughout East Pakistan for the first time after partition. The movement peaked in 1952, when police opened fire on protesting students and murdered at least nine individuals.
The cartoon depicts how the artist saw this whole debate, the exclusion of the Bengalis, where the alphabets represent both the Bengali culture and its people. When the cartoon was published in 1950, the government started an absurd project to Arabize the language, meaning changing the Bengali alphabet to the Arabic alphabet, similar to Urdu to make it more “Pakistani”. The artist saw this initiative as cultural and ethnic exclusion of the Bengalis, rather than integration. This is why attackers in the cartoon were depicted as people in non-Bengali attire, signaling that this expulsion is actually broadening ethnic divide.
The Bhasha Andolon was the movement that drove Bengalis in East Pakistan to debate the connection between freedom and language. The primary argument of this movement was that linguistic freedom is also a crucial part of the Pakistan project. Yet, this refusal to accommodate freedom of language within the framework of the Pakistan state, while simultaneously branding the movement as a divisive conspiracy, also unveils that the idea of Pakistan, and consequently the idea of freedom, was understood differently in East and West Pakistan. Dopiaza showed in his cartoon that this exclusion of language is, in reality, violent ethnic suppression. The unfolding events during the movement quickly raised questions regarding the political and economic aspects of freedom as well. This was evident in Kasem’s later cartoons on economic and cultural exploitation, which were published in the special issues for the Bhasha Andolon. This entanglement of different questions of freedom would, one and a half decades later, lay the groundwork for the emergence of Bengali nationalism.