Speaking Home, 2020

Multiculturalism is not a mere slogan. It grows on the robust health of the component cultures. Each such culture's edifice is built on the mother language of the people born and nurtured into conscious members of the society to which they belong. It is the root that establishes their identity as they share the same language and cultural mores. "Speaking Home" is an innovative exposer of mother languages spoken by people celebrating the multicultural superstructure of the Canadian nation. On the occasion of the International Mother Language Day on 21 February 2020, it was held under the auspices of the provincial capital of Nova Scotia, Halifax, and the local Bangladeshi diaspora. Rafiqul Islam, a Canadian citizen who is originally from Bangladesh was the prime mover for the declaration of 21 February as the International Mother Language Day at the UN in reverence to the day when Bengalis rose and fell to protect their mother language at Dhaka in 1952. Bangladesh observes this day nationally as Shahid Day meaning the Day of the Martyrs. It has an emotional bearing on the Bangladeshis as they recall the sacrifice of the language martyrs on that day to preserve their cultural identity in the nationhood of then Pakistan. This consciousness became stronger through political movement for self-rule culminating in the birth of Bangladesh after a populist revolution and bloody warfare. Visiting eminent Bengali poet Asad Chowdhury reiterates this from a historical perspective.