wae ap NYT isa} thet end ee palates . CXR te ' Deter = a A oma Corti 5 Scour EGE) ' ern INTO CLE GES Hh. Policy Options COPE [ rs. Sa ST a] ¢ A : — 4 SO Exclusion ~ ) ~ oe In post 1974 A ii H Wp Pakistan and ome Tm Ce CK) Cera neat ee po Counter y DASE T LCE] = Yasser Latif Hamdani Narrative for © rirst contact = ; saps Ma - teed Sahar Pirzada ELUNECHALLENGES TO THE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY OF NORTH PAKISTAN Zubair Torwali* Indigenous communities living in the mountainous terrain and valleys in northern Pakistan speak over 24 indigenous languages. Some of these languages are Khowar, Shina, Indus Kohistani, Torwali, Gawri, Palula, Kalasha, Dameli, Gawar-bati, Bateri, Chiloso, Dumaki, Brushaski, Ushojo, Balti, Wakhi, Yidgha, etc.; and they are the known indigenous languages spoken in northern Pakistan. All of these languages are ‘endangered’ according to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s languages in danger. These languages are endangered because of a number of challenges/threats the languages and their speakers face. Crucial among these challenges/threats are lack of political organization, marred identities, no written tradition, and marginalization, globalization, the rule of dominant languages over these languages, rough terrain, poverty and so forth. The aforementioned cultural, political, linguistic and ecological milieu adds to the ‘language and cultural loss’ among these communities. Notwithstanding the toughest challenges, there are some good initiatives carried out in these communities that are focused on reversing the language and cultural loss by documenting the languages and cultures in question, transmitting the languages and cultures to the coming generation; and by trying to make the languages relevant in pedagogical setting. This paper studies the challenges these communities face. It briefly mentions the work carried out for the documentation, Preservation and ee * The author is a senior research fellow with CRSS and th : e Executive Dii F Mdara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT) Bahrain Swat, KP. oe Pakistan.Essay vion Of these lnguape: H : Fone on Rupes by individualy and e i ganizations COMMUNILY-baged juroduetion The areas Where these langua ABCs are spoken ¢ ‘ >. ountainous northern parts of Poken comprise of the the northwestern fron i Orthwestern frontier ‘ xhyber Pakhtunkhwa- and Gilgit-Batistan. Province named ges (Decker, 2004) are ¢ ve Lt Chitral only twelve Janguage » 2 are spoken, ‘These are KI panveli, Palula (Phatura), Gawarebati Yidghi Shekhy Nees Palast, slashti Persian, Gujati, Wakh) oa ene eekhani, Eastern Kativiri, as! + Swart, Wakhi and Pashto. KI i ‘i in Chitral. In the Swat | he indice ete dominant . Ust ove va ley the indigenous languages are Torwali, Gaw Shojo and Gujari, Pashto is the dominant language in swat. Torw ali and Gawti are said to be the ancient indigenous languages (Torwali, 2015) of Swat which are traced back to the pre-Muslim era in the valley. In Indus Kohistan there are five indigenous languages spoken in addition to Gujari and Pashto, ‘These languages are Kohistani Shina, Chilliso, Gowro and Bateri (Hallberg, 2002), In Indus Kohistan the major languages are Shina and Kohistani, In upper Dir district Gawri is spoken along with the moribund language Kalkoti. In Northern Areas - present day Gilgit-Baltistan - Shina, Brushaski, Balti, Khowar and Domaki are spoken, The major languages here are Shina, Balti and Brushaski (Backstrom & Radloff, 2002). All these languages, excluding Wakhi, Yidgha, Balti and Brushaski, are Indo-Aryan languages. They have been classified as Dardic by a number of writers, notably by G.W Leitner (Leitner, 1880, 1866, 1886 and 1893). The number of people es is never correct because in Pakistan speaking each of these langua; ‘ these communities do not have a separate counting column in the census. Their populations vary from a few thousands to millions. According to Ethnologue’ there are around ans paeiee Currently spoken in the world. Linguists estimate that by the en oe century, more than half of these 7000 plus spoken ee, ie extinct, resulting in loss of valuable scientific and cultural information. i i for 7,106 eb-based publication that contains statistics 108. iatologue: Languages ofthe Word is 0 Woe bse oat ‘Up until the 16th edition in 2009, the lange ialects in the 17th edition, released Publication was a printed volume. 113 CRITERION — January/March 2017a — Essay UNESC 0's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger’, — 2.473 languages into five le vels of endangerment: 1. Vulnerable — not spoken by children outside the home; i ony Endangered — children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home; ' 3. Severely Endangered — language 1s spoken by grandparents ang older generations, while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves; 4, Critically Endangered — the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently; and 5. Extinct. Almost all the indigenous languages spoken in northern Pakistan are endangered. Some of them, for instance, Bateri, Chilliso, Kalkoti or Domaki, etc. are under the category of critically endangered languages whereas languages like Shina, Torwali, Khowar, Gawri, Kohistani, etc. are in the catalogue of definitely endangered languages. These languages are endangered because of a number of challenges! threats the languages and their speakers face. Crucial among these challenges/threats are: Lack of a script: _ These languages don’t have ‘widely'’ used script. The working scripts they have are based on Arabic. Orthographies in these languages cele eel terannanstna coe ee ie er UNESCO.org, 2010. Retrieved 17 May 2013. Athough scripts have been designed for Khowar, Shina, Indus Kohistai. eee Brushaski and Palula but these aren’t widely used within the Palula Indus eres: Among these languages, especially Torwali, Gawri and ESCORT istani, and Khowar the situation has bettered off over the yea" ecause of the early childhood education initiatives undertaken '" these communities with ist and Forum for Canes z © support of Summer Institute of Linguistics (S!) nitiative (FL), Ai ; the script among the Torwali community ; . Among them the literacy © of literacy (for both coe tt, sPreading a bit faster because of a numbe! Baraye Taleem-o-T: oe 0-Taraqi (IBT), N4 CRITERION — Volume 12 No.1Essay have recently been developed With the techni nstitute of Linguistics, None of these langu; pefore the beginning of the third millenniy wherein a number of writers tried to write tl some languages, for instance, Balti, some instead of the Arabic one, Having been no written literature of worth was ever old poets in Shina and Khowar wrote th Urdu literacy among the people com alphabets, even for the special sounds ti ical support of the Summer ages had a writing tradition im, except Khowar and Shina their works following Urdu. In People use a Romanized script without a Working. orthography written in these languages, The ir works using Urdu alphabets. pelled the writers to use Urdu hese languages have. No recognition by the state These languages aren’t recognized by the government of Pakistan to be used in schools as a medium of instruction or subjects. Neither are they recognized as national languages of Pakistan. Pakistan’s constitution doesn’t even recognize any indigenous group in the country. In 2012 the then provincial government in the northwestern province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, however, made a law wherein four languages: Saraiki, Khowar, Hindko and Indus Kohistani were allowed to be gradually used at pre-primary schooling where these languages are mother languages of a majority of the children, whereas, Pashto, the dominant language in the province was made a compulsory subject in primary grades in areas where it is the language of the majority ( (Group, International Crisis, 2014). This law is known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Promotion of Regional Languages Authority Act 2012 in the dais frontier province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The succeeding government, a has not taken the initiative further and the establishment of the authority is still in a state of limbo. Suffering a marred identity Since the state education in Pakistan TS ee mies cultural diversity of society in course books; @crefore, a majority of have no effective political say in the on indigenous identity ordinary educated Pakistanis don’t know @ a aders dismantled their of these communities. And as the successive 115 CRITERION - January/March 2017Essav centers of powers in the past, these communities re their unique identity and consequently suffer a tarnished one. This es © reason that a majority of these communities relate themselves witl Arabs or the dominating communities they live with. Moreover, globalization has also posed critical questions of identity and identity construction. It is a complex issue especially in context of a rapidly imposed external change. Culture and identity share many things, yet they are not the same. Though an important part, there is more to identity than culture. Identity is very much political as well. Given the complexity of identity construction and the modern tools that shape it these ethnic minorities seem the worst victims of marred identities. Onslaught of globalization—cultural and religious Globalization has affected every community in Pakistan, whether large or small, but the impacts of it are fatal on these already suppressed communities as they are triply influenced by it: internationally, nationally and provincially or locally. Globalization has affected them in two areas the most: their language and culture. A majority of them regard their languages and cultures as hurdles in the way to development. This is the reason why many of them shift not only their culture but also the language. The best example of this is the threatened Kalash community, the single Dardic community in Pakistan which has so far retained its unique indigenous worldviews. Conversion in this community is higher; and when any body of the Kalash community converts to Islam he or she leaves his language and culture along with their faith. AS is the case with many such communities, the affluent families ane ae communities of north Pakistan feel pride in speaking Urdu enue ae Their culture and language are also threatened by the ihe plobal aa dominated media—both electronic and print. Similarly the form of a es in religious fundamentalism/fanaticism, especially in affected the a "ically charged puritanical version of Islam has badly folk traditions ae of these communities. They cannot observe their cia ™usic or rituals. Of course, these new phenomena have Ber Society as well but these indigenous communities 116 CRITERION — Volume 12 No.1 eaEssay survive the onslaught as they are Ie: nol i i ca jIy and economically and historically Ss in number, weak both politic’ brutalized, ziving in hard terrains jiving All of these, communities live jn Mountains. Many of them livi iy northern Pakistan share the same history, ancestry and culture bu cannot relate to each other, being scattered in valleys in the ona aithe Hindu Kush, Karakorum, Himalaya and Pamir. This has cut them ator centuries. The Shina or the Khov ( tn a 01 Var community of Gilgit and Chitral don’t Know that their sister communities live in Swat or in Dir, Even the Khowar community in Chitral, where it is dominant, feel shy about being identified with the Kalash, Palula or Dameli communities living in Chitral too. The aforementioned cultural, political, linguistic and ecological milieu adds to the ‘language and cultural loss’ among these communities. Notwithstanding the toughest challenges, there are some good initiatives carried out in these communities that are focused on reversing the language and cultural shift by documenting the languages and cultures in question, transmitting the languages and cultures to the coming generation and by trying to make the languages relevant in peda al setting. These initiatives in northern Pakistan are: |. Forum for Language Initiatives (FLI): It is a civil society organization established in 2002 with the aim of training people ftom the indigenous communities in northern Pakistan so as 2 enable them to document and promote their languages. FLT has so far tained scores of language activists in more than a ee in basic linguistics, orthography development, 7 ney 4 eacher training and in community mobilization an ae Wdara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT): This S en organization based in Swat. Established in 200 , 1 aon objectives is the revitalization, documentation ane’ p i age. This of endangered languages, especially the Torwali languag 7 CRITERION — January/March 2017Essay forum has, so far, written a number of books in and on the Torwalj language. It has also been successfully implementing @ mother tongue based on early childhood multilingual education initiative among the Torwali community in upper Swat. | Gawri Multilingual Education Program in Gawri community Swat by the Gawri Community Development Program (GCDp): Gawri is a sister language of Torwali and is spoken in Kalam, Swat and in upper Dir district. GCDP has, to date, published a number of books in and on Gawri. It has also been implementing a mother tongue based on an early childhood multilingual education project in the area. 4. Palula Multilingual Education Program in southern Chitral by the Palula Community Welfare Program (PCWP): The PCWP has also been running similar programs to those of GCDP and IBT. 5. Other such programs are: Kohistani Multilingual Education Program in Indus Kohistan by the community based organization, Initiative for People in Need (IPN); Khowar Multilingual Education Program in Chitral by Mother -tongue Institute for Education and Research (MIER); the Bakarwal Mobil School System for the nomadic Gujjars in Azad Jamu & Kashmir; and the Hindko based multilingual education project by a community based organization in Abottabad, Pakistan. we Conclusion Some good initiatives by the communities themselves are underway with the meager support of some international organizations. These communities, however, cannot sustain this work unless and until the Pakistani government recognizes these languages and sets up plans for the preservation and promotion of these languages. Globalization, with all its modern technologies, is a threat to these communities but it can be turned into an Opportunity if proper measures are undertaken for including these languages in education and media - the primary drivers of globalization, CRITERION — Volume 12 No.1Essay piliograP HY P., & Radloff, F.C. (20 ackstrom, C. P., off, F.C. 02). Li | aes Ed.) Sociolinguistic Survey of ae Pa ee (F.C. oker 2004). " ‘ ie ae ee . ae Languages of Chitral. Sociolinguistic Survery of Northern 3, Group. International Crisis. (2014). Education Reform in Pakistan. International Crisis Group. Islamabad/Brussels: International Crisis Group. Hallberg. D. D. (2002). Languages of Indus Kohistan. (F. C, O’Leary, Ed.) Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan , 1, 83-140, Leitner, G. (1880, 1866, 1886 and 1893). Dardistan. New Delhi: Manjusuri Publishing House [reprint 1978}. 6 Torwali, Z. (2015). The ignored Dardic culture of Swat. Journal of Languages and Culture , 6(5), 30-38.