Kashmiri Is Dying-Speak Before It’s Silent Forever!

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)

File Photo

In reductive and prosaic terms, ‘a living language is one that is used and spoken by people of a given society or culture’. Given this, is Kashmiri a ‘living language’? This question may sound preposterous to many. A ‘common sense’ reaction to this would be, ‘but of course’. But probe deeper or scratch the surface, a different (and unsalutary) picture emerges: our mother tongue Kashmiri is a dying language. How? First, in vernacular terms, the Kashmiri we speak is far from haute Kashmiri. There is a correlation between thought (thinking) and language. If this is a tight correlation, this then means that we Kashmiris may have lost the mental paradigm of high thinking- a corollary of which is simple living. But this may not be too alarming given that there is a disconnect between haute culture- of which language is an indelible component of – and the vernacular idiom across the world.

Of greater concern and worry is that our Gen Next (Millennials of Kashmir) hardly speak Kashmiri. In the main they speak an approximation of Urdu sprinkled with English words and so on. Can this Kashmiri ‘pidgin’ this be named? I don’t know. It is difficult to coin a neologism for this. But this is beside the point. The alarmingly gradual and inexorable drift into losing our language has deep implications and consequences captured best by the phrase,’ lose your language, lose your culture’. The question that arises here is: Is culture important? Yes. It is. Why? Even though there is no such thing as an entirely original and authentic culture, but it(culture) is the anchor that gives people a meaningful framework to negotiate life and the world. Once a given peoples loses its culture, it loses this ‘centre’ or anchor. By way of a corollary and analogy a society or people that lose their culture are like ‘floating atoms’ that have no nucleus prone to be caught in the whirlwind of forces that may or may not be sanguine.

ADVERTISEMENT

But a contra hypothesis is that we live in a quasi- globalized world, where latching onto one’s culture may not be prudent or even practical. This argument is quasi-facetious: globalization in the sense of movement of peoples, and negating identities in different and differential domains, time and space actually privileges hybridity. What is meant by this? Simply put, it means negotiating a globalized time space domain in real and practical terms both holding on to one’s culture (the sanguine aspects) and engaging with the world at large in the idiom that it demands. It may, for example, mean that a Kashmiri man or woman speaks fluent Kashmiri, is able to code, say for Google or Microsoft, but at the same time turns up at Microsoft or Google headquarters wearing the Kashmiri pheran(a loose woolen tunic worn by Kashmiris in autumn and winter). Key here is he or she must do excellent and unparalleled coding. This is a very important point. It perhaps goes to the heart of why our Gen Next is not encouraged to speak in Kashmiri- that is, a deep inferiority complex that appears to define us. There appears to be no alternative explanation for this. But there is a structural reason: a point or thesis elaborated upon by sociologists and anthropologists is that there is a correspondence between the structure of society and the language it uses. If this thesis holds, it suggests that a morphed, mutated and altered Kashmiri language or even ‘pidgin’ Kashmiri is correlated with a morphed, and mutated societal and social structure. The corollary here is harks back to the point made earlier,’ lose your language, lose your culture’. If then the drift continues, the day is not too far when we Kashmiris will not recognize ourselves in each other. We will have lost both our culture and languages.

ADVERTISEMENT

Can this alarming drift be stemmed? Can a new bold and beautiful idiom that smacks of self-confidence (not arrogance) , self-assuredness , cultural and social well -being be crafted? This is a difficult question to answer and what I will posit is more hope and aspiration than reality. This is in my three beautiful children- all in the age bracket of 3-10 years. ( I must confess here that I too am guilty of ‘following the herd’ and not imparting and teaching Kashmiri to my children)While the youngest one is too young to understand but will obviously follow her older siblings, my middle and older daughters harp on a theme that warms the cockles of my heart. The refrain for both is, ‘ mye chhu Kaeshur khosh karaan. Mye seath kar Kaeshur’.( I like Kashmiri. Talk to me in Kashmiri). Of course, this is said in an inflected and accented Kashmiri which is a problem. But their desire to speak in Kashmiri is a great starting point. What I cull from this is that there is hope and this springs eternal. Now returning to the core theme of this essay, I will conclude by positing that Kashmiri is a fertile, rich language that has excited the imagination and poetic genius of great luminaries. All is not lost then. There can come a day when a Pheran clad Kashmiri person , can after having created a great software program , or developed an AI application can saunter on the streets of Manhattan, Paris or London and regale his or non- western audiences in pure and sublime Kashmiri poems. Our hypothetical Kashmiri person can then return home(for vacation or otherwise) , wander around our downtown , have some Nadir Monje(Kashmiri condiments), go home , place the Kanger (Kashmiri clay fire pot bound by wicker) under his or her pheran , put a potato in the Kanger and relish it after its roasted. And in wintry evenings or nights, dust off his or her book shelf read aloud the beautiful and sublime poetic verses of Soche Kraal sahib, Shamas Faqeer sahib, Rasool Mir Sahib, Abdul Ahad Aazad sahib, Rahman Rahi sahib and other great luminaries!

MENAFN21022025000215011059ID1109235688

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}