21 February is a memorable day in our national history. We observe the day every year as International Mother Language Day. The day is a national holiday. On this day, we pay tribute to the martyrs who laid down their lives to establish Bangla as a state language in undivided Pakistan in 1952. This is known as the Language Movement. The seed of the Language Movement was Sown on 21 March 1948 when Mohammad Ali Zinnah, the then Governor General of Pakistan, at a public meeting in Dhaka declared that Urdu would be the only official language of Pakistan. The declaration raised a storm of protest in the eastern part of the country. The protest continued non-stop, gathering momentum day by day. It turned into a movement and reached its climax in 1952. The government outlawed all sorts of public meetings and rallies to prevent it.