Today is the International Mother Language Day. This day emphasizes the use of one's mother language and culture without any interference. This leads to sustainable development.
In human history, we see how victors, to subdue the defeated peoples, forced their own language and culture on them. The story of the Bengali (Bangla) language movement of Bangladesh in 1952 is an example of how the people of Bangladesh successfully resisted the imposition of the Urdu language on them by the West Pakistani authorities. This ultimately inspired UNESCO to declare February 21 as the International Mother Language Day worldwide.
Another example is Lithuania. The Russian empire, to Russianize Lithuania, banned books written in Latin script and imposed Cyrillic script from 1864 t0 1904. To save their language and culture from the Russian onslaught, some patriotic Lithuanians resorted to smuggling books to Lithuania from different countries. To learn more, kindly read the following:
- Lithuanian book smugglers (Wikipedia)
- The 19th Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their Language (July 19, 2017)
- Lithuania: A Literary Legacy (January 11, 2017)
- Legacy of the Book Smugglers (May 16, 2002)
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