“I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.” — Samuel Johnson
Mother tongue/ language is without any doubt the identity of any nation. It tells us where a particular person belongs to. It reflects the cultural ethos and social milieu of an individual. Every country holds its mother tongue dear, for it carries with it the overall identity of its speakers.
Every year, the International Mother Tongue/ Language Day is celebrated on 21 February to promote its linguistic and cultural importance. We do celebrate it with much fervour and enthusiasm but once the celebrations in the form of seminars etc are over, we throw to the winds everything about it and start talking in lingos that are alien and outlandish. Learning and speaking the languages of other nations is good but it should not be done at the cost of one’s own mother tongue.
The English language being an international/ global language has sounded a death knell to many languages of the world. People shun their own languages and do their utmost to learn English language. People fail to understand that English, like their own language, is only a language and nothing more than that. When we stop speaking our mother tongue and adopt other languages, we are actually doffing our identity badge and donning an alien badge of identity that does not suit us well.
When people fail to understand the importance of their own language, they avoid using it, and also refrain from teaching it to their posterity. This process is what the British linguist David Crystal calls “Language Death”. A language dies when its speakers stop speaking it, says Crystal.
These days the Kashmiri language has a dwindling number of speakers. The reason is that we don’t bother to teach it to our new generations. Modern parents with westernised education, globalised ideology and all that, consider it much beneath their social status to teach their children their mother tongue that is Kashmiri. They do not allow their kids to learn and speak Kashmiri. They consider it an inferior language lacking in richness of thought, influence and grace. They either teach them Urdu or English. But mostly English is prioritised over every other language. The irony is that well-educated Kashmiri parents instead of being the custodians of their language are proving destroyers of the same with their colonised mentality.
Teaching one’s children English, Urdu, etc, is good. The knowledge of other languages can widen their mental horizon and they will come to learn about the literature and culture of other nations as well. We have every right to make our children polyglots. But we should not shun our own Kashmir language at the same time. We should teach our kids our Kashmiri language and let them speak it at home. We have a number of places where we can use English, flaunt it and rule the roost. But we should speak Kashmiri language in our local festivals, cultural events, etc, in order to promote it.
The other glaringly manifest reason for the dwindling speakers of Kashmiri language is that it is not taught as a subject/ discipline at the elementary level in our schools with seriousness. Had it been taught in schools like English, Urdu and Hindi, the taste and aptitude for it would have been enormous among children who are its ambassadors in the true sense of the term. But alas!
Another tangible reason for its dwindling speakers is that the literature written in Kashmiri language has a minuscule number of readers. This readership is only that of old people. The people who try to keep it alive do so because they know our Kashmiri language is our sole and solid identity. They know we are Kashmiri because of our Kashmiri language. Modernised guys and gals, on the other hand, assume airs when they speak the hotchpotch of English and Urdu and feel embarrassed to speak Kashmiri.
If we won’t try to save our Kashmiri language from extinction, its repercussions would be damning and damaging for us Kashmiris culturally. Forthcoming will be the day when we will be the victims of identity crisis. We will have a generation of people who would be speaking everything but Kashmiri and we will feel ourselves alien and displaced in our own Kashmir! The death of our Kashmiri language would erode our cultural identity and all the aspects associated with it. So, let’s take a pledge to save it from falling in the list of extinct/ endangered languages.

The writer is a research scholar at the Department of English, AMU. He has qualified UGC-NET and JKSET for Assistant Professorship. He can be mailed at [email protected]

Bilal Ahmad Dar (Bismil)