Bengali Question Paper in English; 'Amar Cheler Bangla Ta Thik Aashey Na': Don Bosco School - Silchar

Bhavaniprasad Majumdar’s words “আমার ছেলের বাংলাটা ঠিক আসেনা” (My son can’t speak Bengali), came true today in Silchar, the city of ভাষা শহীদ, the language martyrs. The Bengali question paper of a school in Silchar written in English script went viral in a Facebook post. The incident took place at the famous Don Bosco School in Silchar. The Bengali question paper of the First Unit Test of Class III caught everyone’s attention. The Bengali language paper of this class was typeset in English alphabets. The post on social media saw wide outcry from various sections of society, with people condemning the question, and the school administration, calling it something similar to blasphemy.

Of the four questions in the paper, the second and third questions bearing 11 marks in total asked to, “Write Swarbarna with/without matra”. The post has been shared over a thousand times so far on Facebook and it has spread even beyond through messaging apps.

When Barak Bulletin dialed the Academic in charge of this school, Kshirogopal Sharma, he didn’t bother to explain anything related to this matter. Rather he asked Barak Bulletin to reach their office in person to discuss the matter in detail with the concerned teacher and the authorities of Don Bosco School Silchar. This negates the question of whether the question was actually printed by Sichar Don Bosco. Sharma said, “We have certain limitations and we cannot talk about this over the phone. You can come to our school and we are free to talk about it. We have some obligations and therefore we are not ready to talk about this matter on the phone. We are ready to comment on this matter if you come to our school”.

Not so surprisingly, when trying to contact the school Principal, it was revealed that he is out of town now and cannot be contacted. What about the Academic Director? Well, he has also made himself unavailable today.

The intelligentsia of the town had some ideas to share on this entire debacle. Cachar College Economics Professor Dr. Joydeep Biswas shared his feedback with us on this issue. According to him, it seems that the students are at the initial stage of learning Bengali in this case and this may be the reason why it is not easy to understand the whole sentence in Bengali. Just like many schools have Sanskrit or Arabic exam questions in other understandable languages like English. But he also mentioned that the authorities could have chosen another solution here.

Noted Academic and the Ex-Vice Chancellor of Assam University, Dr Tapodhir Bhattacharya on this said, “This shows the reality of our situation and this is nothing surprising. We all know the movements that happened for our language and this is a trial to seize our rights of language and tarnish it with colonised western ideas. Who is behind this organisation? They are the ones fueling their misadventures. This is a private organisation spreading colonised ideas.

They come from someplace else, don’t know the local history, or the hardships the people faced to keep the language alive, they pay no heed to the regionality. I believe all the organisations safeguarding our mother tongue should come together and finish such ideas from their roots.

Don Bosco’s administration came to defend this act saying that Bengali paper is introduced just in class III and it is difficult for the students to read Bengali. To this Dr Tapodhir Bhattacharya replied, “Did the students drop from the sky? Are they not from this region? Don’t they come from Bengali households? Years after years we see this happening and we keep silent. This needs to be opposed in an organised manner. If this school can’t teach Bangla how it is meant to, then they should wrap up their institute and move someplace else”.

In today’s context, one poem “বাংলা টাংলা” (Bangla-Tangla) by Apurva Dutta deserves to be mentioned. “স্কুলে কেন বেঙ্গলিটা পড়ায় না ইংলিশে!” says Dutta when the character in the poem scores low in this one subject Bangla. The line translates, why doesn’t the school teach “Bengali in English”. This fits apt to today’s situation.