A product of history, culture, and tradition, Kashmiri is the mother tongue spoken and understood by the people living and originating within Jammu and Kashmir.
A true source of the rich heritage this beautiful region has to offer-a well-rooted language dating way back, yet today, facing this much bigger existential crisis, the alarming number of speakers going thin on the ground and erosion creeping in.
According to studies and surveys of the past two decades or more, there is an alarming decline in the people’s numbers using Kashmiri as their first language. Hindi and English have replaced Kashmiri as better-lived urban languages.
Schools and media agencies have also used mainly Hindi and English, which heightens the irrelevance of the Kashmiri language in the current world.
In most towns, as a result, parents prefer not to pass the language to their children, as they believe it will be the best key to better socio-economic prospects to have fluency either in Hindi or English.
Linguistic and cultural impacts Kashmiri is heading toward a very dangerous course, and it has grave consequences beyond that of the language for the identity and culture of the region itself.
The very fabric of Kashmiri culture will have great chances to wash away. In recent times, there have been various campaigns to bring the need for preserving the Kashmiri language into peoples’ mainstream thinking.
So, literary movements, through music, books, newspapers, and more importantly, into educational institutions in order to restore the glory of the native language through Kashmiri-medium schools or conducting language learning workshops to further promote these efforts in order to propagate the revival of the languages.
Besides, with the growth of digital media, there are increasing attempts to create Kashmiri content online, including social media pages, websites, and YouTube channels.
The preservation of Kashmiri will not just remain a question for Kashmiri people only but that the whole country will share their responsibility; it is a matter about safeguarding cultural diversification and hearing the indigenous community voices among the noise created by a global process called homogenization.
Language activists, cultural organizations, and policymakers need to get together to make sure Kashmiri is not just preserved but actively nurtured for the next generations.
