Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Bengal was divided for the first time in 1905, but this situation lasted only for six years because of the mounting protests by the elite Hindus of West Bengal led by, among others, Rabindranath Tagore. His patriotic songs galvanized the Bengalis to fight for reunification, and one song later became the national anthem of Bangladesh. However, the map created in 1905 to separate Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-majority West Bengal was adopted to create East Pakistan during the partition of 1947, and the same map now marks the national boundary of Bangladesh.
2. This day was declared the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO in 2002.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mohammad A. Quayum
Mohammad A. Quayum is an honorary professor at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia and has taught at universities in Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US. He is the author, editor, and translator of nearly 40 books, published by, among others, Brill, Macmillan, Pearson Education, Penguin Books, Peter Lang, Singapore National Library Board, Routledge, and Springer. In addition, he has published more than 130 journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopaedia entries.
Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Md. Mahmudul Hasan earned a PhD in postcolonial, comparative literature at the University of Portsmouth and was a postdoctoral researcher at Heidelberg. He is currently with the Department of English Language and Literature at International Islamic University Malaysia. He has published extensively with the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Brill, Georgia Southern University, Orient BlackSwan, Routledge, SAGE, Wiley-Blackwell, and other presses.