'Speaking Koshur is not low class': Local languages fading, and so is a part of us

May 31, 2025 by News Desk

Ayaan Saroori

“I don’t speak Kashmiri at home. My parents think it makes me sound ‘chapri’—like I’m backward.”

These words come from a 17-year-old Kashmiri boy, who, despite understanding his mother tongue, has been discouraged from using it. In family gatherings, school environments, and even among friends, speaking Kashmiri is increasingly stigmatized. Urdu is seen as the language of religion and formal education, while English is associated with intelligence, global mobility, and modernity. But Kashmiri? Many urban families now view it as a marker of low status or rural backwardness.

This young boy’s experience is not isolated. It reflects a disturbing pattern across Jammu Kashmir, where fluency in the Kashmiri language is rapidly declining, especially among the younger generations. According to the 2011 Census of India, while over 6.7 million people identified Kashmiri as their mother tongue, language use surveys reveal a sharp decline in actual spoken fluency among youth, particularly in urban areas.

A 2021 study by the Kashmir University’s Department of Linguistics observed that fewer than 25% of school-going children in Srinagar speak Kashmiri fluently, with many preferring Urdu or English.

Language is not just a tool for communication—it is a vessel of culture, memory, and identity. Yet in many homes across Kashmir, children are either discouraged or outright forbidden from speaking Kashmiri. Parents fear their children may be seen as uneducated or out of touch with modern aspirations.

“Whenever I try to speak Kashmiri, my Urdu accent gets worse,” said the same teenager. “So I avoid it. My family also prefers that I don’t speak Kashmiri in front of relatives. It’s embarrassing to them.”

The societal pressure to abandon the mother tongue for more “prestigious” languages is symptomatic of a larger identity crisis. As generations grow up with fragmented cultural ties, the loss of linguistic heritage becomes a quiet but devastating cost of modernization.

Educational Exclusion in Chenab Valley

This crisis of linguistic erosion is made worse by institutional neglect. In the Chenab Valley, where Kashmiri is widely spoken, the language has been excluded from the school syllabus, despite a government order from 2017 mandating its inclusion.

In 2020, the Directorate of School Education Jammu (DSEJ) introduced Dogri as a language subject in various schools across Doda and Kishtwar, but Kashmiri was entirely omitted, even though it is the mother tongue of large portions of the population. This move sparked protests by student groups and activists, who accused the administration of cultural bias and warned of irreversible damage to linguistic diversity.

According to local estimates, 44.6% of Kishtwar’s population, 41.59% of Doda’s population and 51.87% of Ramban’s population speak Kashmiri or a Kashmiri variant, often called “Pahari Kashmiri”. Yet, it has been consistently left out of school curricula and policy discussions.

This marginalization has ignited a broader debate in Kashmir’s intellectual circles—should Kashmiri identity be limited only to those who speak the Kashmiri language? This question has deep political, cultural, and social implications.

Inhabitants of Kashmir who speak Pahari, Gojri, Punjabi, or belong to minority communities such as Sikhs and Hindus, often feel excluded from the dominant linguistic narrative. Generations of these communities have lived in Kashmir, contributed to its culture, and shared its history—but are often not recognized as “Kashmiri” because they do not speak the Kashmiri language.

This rigid lens risks alienating significant populations, and ignoring the pluralistic and multiethnic heritage of the region. If identity is tied solely to language, we risk losing not just linguistic diversity but cultural inclusivity itself.

Beyond Kashmiri: The Vanishing Voices of the Chenab Valley

While the decline of Kashmiri is deeply concerning, the situation is even more critical for other regional dialects and languages spoken in Chenab Valley—a linguistically rich region home to languages like Bhadarwahi, Kishtwari, Sirazi, Bhalesi, and others. These languages are on the brink of extinction.

Unlike Kashmiri, which still receives some institutional and media support, these dialects remain unrecognized and unsupported, both in policy and education. Local organizations like The Chenab Times Foundation have raised their voice for their preservation, calling for, Inclusion of Chenabi languages in school curricula starting from kindergarten, Translation of educational material and literary texts into dialects like Kishtwari and Bhadarwahi, Creation of state-level language preservation policies and funding for linguistic research.

“Courses must be introduced in Kishtwari,” said Burhan Ahmed Mir, a resident of Kishtwar. “We need teams of linguists to translate important books and help keep our language alive. Without state support, these languages will disappear.”

The 2011 Census does not even list Kishtwari or Sirazi separately—grouping them under vague categories or larger language umbrellas—further marginalizing their existence in official records.

Why Language Loss Matters

The extinction of a language is not just the loss of words—it is the loss of stories, proverbs, poetry, oral history, and a unique way of seeing the world. Each dialect spoken in J&K carries centuries of heritage and indigenous knowledge. As globalization and digital technologies reshape our identities, there is a critical need to balance progress with cultural preservation.

The revival of mother tongues cannot be achieved at the individual level alone. It requires government support, community mobilization, and changes in societal attitudes. Language should be seen as a source of pride, not shame.

The crisis of fading mother tongues in Jammu Kashmir is both silent and urgent. From the urban youth discarding Kashmiri to the forgotten dialects of the Chenab Valley, we are witnessing the slow erasure of our linguistic soul.

Preserving these languages is not just about saving words—it’s about honoring our ancestors, safeguarding our culture, and reclaiming our identity. Schools must teach these languages, policies must protect them, and we—as individuals, parents, and citizens—must speak them with pride.

If we do not act now, the next generation may only know their mother tongue by name—not by voice.