Kolkata, Feb 21 Most of the hearings on Friday at Calcutta High Court's single-judge bench of Justice Biswasjit Basu were conducted entirely in Bengali as a mark of respect to the International Mother Language Day.
In fact, Justice Basu, while hearing another case on Thursday, expressed his desire to conduct hearings on Friday at his bench in Bengal as far as possible.
Accordingly, most of the arguments in the cases that came up for hearing on Friday were held in Bengali, with exceptions to those cases where knowledge of Bengali was a barrier.
In fact, the counsels appearing for different parties during the hearing on Friday at Justice Basu’s bench extended maximum cooperation on this count, and they too tried to place their arguments and submissions for the day in Bengali to the best possible extent.
Earlier, the current BJP Lok Sabha member from Tamluk constituency in East Midnapore district of West Bengal, Abhijit Gangopadhyay, while he was a judge of the Calcutta High Court, also expressed his desire to conduct hearings in Bengali at his bench on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day.
On Friday, the successful implementation of this was witnessed at Court Number 19 of Calcutta High Court, which is the bench of Justice Basu.
The root of International Mother Language Day is in neighbouring Bangladesh. On February 21, 1952, the Bengali-speaking population in the-then East Pakistan started their movement in support of the development of the Bengali language.
On November 17, 1999, UNESCO for the first time, announced February 21 as the International Mother Language Day.
Later, in 2002, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a UN resolution on the matter.
The main motto of celebrating the day is to promote awareness of linguistic, cultural diversity and multilingualism. Besides West Bengal, the day is also celebrated in certain other states with sizable Bengali-speaking populations, like Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand as well as the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
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