In many postcolonial countries, the English language seems to be an inseparable part of socio-cultural and economic realities. One of the problematic assumptions of language rights is that it tries to reduce the language rights of national and national minorities' ethnic group affiliations. It is assumed that language policy should serve the interests equally and uniformly of all the members of the group. Bangladesh offers an example of how such language rights as human rights that transcend social, religious, and ethnic boundaries have been truncated, necessitating, as it were, a constrained national dialogue on the merits of national-education policies that seemingly exclude minority languages and position the country on the brink of economic disarray and social chaos, and negating the very essence of procedural and distributive justice. The ensuing muted debates in that country are not rife with procedural and distributive justice, in that equity in access to schooling does not loom large in those debates. There is also hardly an acknowledgment that less dominant (or minority) languages need to be more seriously considered in the education policy of a nation with 48 ethnic minority groups, each with its own language. Even with such a large number of traditional languages, historically, debates still focus on Bengali and English, making minority children, particularly those from rural areas, almost personally responsible for learning at least three languages. It is, therefore, important that more extensive work be undertaken to inform the process for instituting national-language policies that will expand educational opportunities to multicultural societies; foster inter-ethnic relationships; create synchronous dialogues among multicultural groups; prepare them to respect LHRs as, and synchronize them with, social equity; and encourage them to participate more actively in an increasingly global marketplace.
The most widely used home language in Bangladesh is Bengali, spoken by approximately 100 million people out of a total population of approximately 150 million in the country. A second important language, spoken by approximately 5 million people, is Sylhetti, also an Indo-Iranian language. Chittagonian, spoken by 14 million people, is widely considered a dialect of Bengali, but it is not mutually intelligible, and most of its speakers do not use standard Bengali. Although Bengali plays a central role in most institutions in Bangladesh, in reality, other languages also are central to life in rural areas, with consequences for education and literacy.
The minority languages of Bangladesh include varieties from different language families. Many speakers of the minority languages speak some Bengali as a second language, though proficiency levels vary widely. Many varieties are not used for writing, and many speakers are not literate in any language. To date, the government has no language policy for the ethnolinguistic minorities of Bangladesh. This paper uses historical documents, government data, and structured interviews with Bangladesh's policy planners to examine the linguistic minority rights in Bangladesh. The result shows that the present policy creates inequality for minority children in Bangladesh. This paper calls for language planning and policy that emphasizes pedagogic equity.
