Hence the lofty position of universal reverence our language martyrs have carved for them in the very sanctuary of every being's heart - a position of envy, unparalleled in the whole of the planet. Rafique, Shafique, Barkat, Salam, Jabbar and other co-martyrs are no more Benglaee heroes only but international ones who are equally admired by every individual throughout the length and breadth of the world and at all nooks and corners of the globe thus investing the language Martyrs' Day with a unique position in the calendar of the red-letter days.

Sacrifices are good deeds. Like all other good deeds they never go unrecognised and unrewarded, unsung and unhonoured, however giant the forces opposed to it may be. It is in the very nature of evil that it tries to annihilate the truthful, good and constructive. The destructive forces of evil, the monsters of inequity never let slip any chance to pounce upon the constructive powers of good so that the mankind cannot benefit from the uninterrupted progress of civilization. They never respite or relax; they are ever wakeful and alert to put any conceivable and inconceivable halt to the advancement of mankind. The good however, never fails to rise up to the occasion and prove itself equal to the task of challenging the evil and subduing it to trounce it out. The evil finally gives in and the good emerges out victorious though at a tremendous cost and sacrifice of irreparable nature.

Those who fall fighting with the evil are held high in popular esteem, for their supreme sacrifice earns security and opportunity for their comrades and contemporaries as well as posterity. So long as the posterity exists and enjoys the achievements the sacrificing heroes have bequeathed for them, popular remembrance celebrates their glory i.e. their ideals and deeds are immortalised in the memory of the people who encourage historians to write in letters of gold about the valour of the martyrs. They are as dear to the heart of the people as the cause they fight for is. The nature of the loftiness of the cause - the involvement of public interest in the struggle determines the nature of popular reverence for those who take part in it. If the sturggle centres round a temporary issue that involves a topical event i.e. the event though important for the time being is deplete of far reaching implications and consequences, its appeal diminishes with the passage of time and eventually disappears from popular mind. Dissimilar is the case with issues that revolve round the question of man's existence and his sustainability and continuance. The sacrifice made in the struggle involving such issues continue to undulate the mind of the people eternally. The people are aroused with benign thoughts and lofty ideals that inspire them to make sacrifice in their turn for the achievement of national objectives when need arises.

In times of crises when the dark forces cloud the national horrizon the heroic sons of the soil shine like luminous stars to lead the people through thick and thin.

"To the innermost heart of their own land they are known,
As the stars are known to the night
As the stars that are starry in times of our darkness
To the end, to the end, they remain."

All nations have their heroes of the above stature, but a few of them can be proud of having been blessed with heroes whose influence and importance transcend the national boundaries. Their contribution assumes

universal significance and they are regarded as international heroes as they sacrifice for causes that concern the lot of all nations of the world. Such international stature was incarnated in the figure of those working people who laid down their lives on the 1st of May in Hay Market in Chicago for securing their rights to work for not exceeding eight hours a day. As every country of the world is populated by the workers, the May Day martyrs are mourned, remembered and regarded all over the world. So the location of their death did not stand a bar to their being universalised.

An occasion of the kind of May Day, our Shahid Day (Martyrs' Day) gains more in importance compared with the former. May day created the opportunity of the working people who are opposed to by the capitalists. The capitalists do not see the May Day eye to eye with the labouring class with the consequence that theirs is a divided loyalty to the martyrs, for they, the former, by their class limitation, do not have the same intensity of the sense of respect for the struggle that occasioned the May Day. Our Shahids (Martyrs) of the Language Movement are, however,claimant to, and do deserve, a universal homage in that they laid down their lives to hold aloft the position of their mother tongue from the compulsion of receding into a second class language. Everybody does have a mother tongue - the white and the black, the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, the aboriginals and the cosmopolitans, the literate and the illiterate all have it. Every man, nay perhaps every living thing including plants and animals feel comfortable and convenient only when he can communicate through his mother tongue the most important factor for creating an enabling environment in which he can consider himself to have been provided with the normal opportunity for self-expression and self-development. Let alone the illiterate, the highly educated individual finds himself at bay if put in a situation where he is deprived of his mother tongue to express himself properly, adequately and perfectly. Hence the lofty position of universal reverence our language martyrs have carved for them in the very sanctuary of every being's heart - a position of envy, unparalleled in the whole of the planet. Rafique, Shafique, Barkat, Salam, Jabbar and other co-martyrs are no more Benglaee heroes only but international ones who are equally admired by every individual throughout the length and breadth of the world and at all nooks and corners of the globe thus investing the language Martyrs' Day with a unique position in the calendar of the red-letter days. It has been an all-peoples' day the second of which is yet to be. And UN has acted up to universal expectation by having declared and recognised it as the International Mother Language Day. The sacrifice of the language martyrs of Bangladesh is, thus, transfigured into that of all peoples of the globe peoples of all hues and races, of all habitations and locations, of all classification and distinctions, of all castes, and creeds and of sexes and features. Everyone on earth cannot but take pride in the sacrifice and achievement of our language martyrs and sing in praise of them.

Arshad Ali is Inspector of Colleges (Offg) University of Dhaka.