“She does not have any respect for language. I placed the floral wreath, the president paid respect, but she and her party men trampled the place,” Hasina said on Wednesday at a discussion organised by the Awami League on the occasion of International Mother’s Language Day at the Krishibid Institute.
“If you step onto the place designated for placing flowers, then where did you put flowers? It must be on your own feet,” she asked.
The prime minister said, “I understand she lost her balance but what about the people who were accompanying her? They could tell her where to stand. Or should we assume that her party men also lose balance at midnight?”
“They simply ruined the sanctity of the day by their midnight act,” she continued.
“What he said at that time is still applicable in the present day context. They started distorting the nation’s history after killing the father of the nation,” she argued.
“There was an attempt to erase his (Bangabandhu’s) contribution from history – the leadership role he played in the Language Movement and country’s Independence War.”
Hasina also said the poems of Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam were distorted during the Pakistan era.
She urged the people to give up the tendency of speaking ‘Bangla with an English accent’.