Varsity inaugurates martyr monument on Bhasha Divas

Kolkata: Nearly seventy years ago, a group of students from the Dhaka University, died fighting for recognition of Bengali as an official language of Bangladesh.

They also protested to protect the self-entity, culture and heritage of their nation.

Indian Institute of Engineering, Science and Technology (IIEST) in Howrah inaugurated a new monument on Thursday to pay homage to the Dhaka University students who died fighting for the cause.

The monument, which has been built by the students of the architecture department of the 162-year-old institute, is a replica of Shahid Minar in Dhaka. The assistant registrar of the institute, Bibhor Das, had teamed up with a bunch of students to construct the monument on the campus which has been installed next to the academic building.

The students of the institute constructed the monument using scrap material such as parts of broken furniture, aluminum staircase handrails and wires, commonly found in the garbage dumps of the institute.

In a report, registrar of IIEST Biman Bandyopadhyay said the idea was to help the students to develop love for literature in their respective mother tongues. He further said since the students who study engineering, usually spend most of their lives without reading much literature in their mother tongue so it leaves them incomplete in a way. The institute is trying to make the literary culture stronger.

To encourage the students to read more literary texts in the vernacular language, the institute has also planned to set up an exclusive library. The library will be installed in the heritage Madhusudhan Bhavan on the campus, which is about to be restored. Commemorating the occasion, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted: "Best wishes to all on International Mother Language Day. Respect all languages but take pride in your mother tongue".