Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra: Regional Dialects and Provincial Accents in Re-imagining a New Bengali Nation

Abstract

The paper tells the story of Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra (SBBK), a clandestine radio station that promoted Bengali autonomy during East Pakistan’s separation from its Western wing in 1971. SBBK strategically disseminated certain auditory signs and acoustic cues, including political speeches, folk ballads, skits, and nationalist songs, over the airspace of East Bengal. One significant ‘sound’ SBBK was known for promoting was radio programmes in regional dialects and accented voices, signalling a political break from the Urdu-speaking administrative centre in Karachi. Even though Bangla and Urdu coexisted on air to varying degrees until March 1971, the Pakistan Broadcasting Association preferred modernized Bangla without regional dialects. After the debacle of the 1952 Language Movement, Bengalis pointed out that the Pakistani state acted like colonialists; many proclaimed that the state’s attempt to reform Bangla ‘created a fear of new colonial design and slavery’. This paper revisits Radio Pakistan’s fraught relationship with the Bangla vernacular to make an argument for what the ‘late colonial period’ meant for Bengalis in 1971 and to demonstrate the role SBBK played in facilitating nationalist politics through the promotion of provincial accents and regional dialects