Friday, July 18, 2025

The tale of our tongue: Language, memory, and politics of erasure

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Tousif Raza

Urdu, without doubt, is a language of exquisite poetic capacity. Its lyrical beauty has carved a space for itself in the literary and emotional landscape of the subcontinent. Yet, when we speak of Kashmir, Urdu’s rise carries a much deeper, more troubling political history. In our region, Urdu is not just a language of literature—it is a tool of historical imposition. It did not arrive in Kashmir as a natural extension of cultural evolution but as a colonial construct, deliberately designed to serve the administrative and ideological interests of foreign rulers.

Even in the broader context of undivided Hindustan, Urdu—or Hindustani as it was often called—was not the language of the elite or the intellectual class. It began as the lingua franca of the unlettered masses, spoken by both Hindus and Muslims across northern India. The educated classes—across religious lines—were rooted in Persian, the language of court, learning, and refinement. Persian had long served as the language of poetry, diplomacy, philosophy, and historiography. Urdu was viewed as colloquial and vernacular, useful for daily communication but rarely for high culture or governance.

This is where British colonial policy played a pivotal role. Recognizing the deep Persianate traditions that bound the intellectual and administrative structures of pre-colonial India, the British saw an opportunity for disruption. Promoting Urdu over Persian was not just a linguistic shift—it was a political strategy. By dismantling the Persian-reading elite and promoting a new class of Urdu-literate bureaucrats, the British aimed to replace the old intellectual order with a new colonial one. This was presented as reform, but in essence, it was a form of cultural reengineering.

A telling example of this policy can be found in the case of Jam-i-Jahan Numa, one of the earliest newspapers in colonial India. It was launched in 1822 in Calcutta by a Bengali Brahmin, Harihar Dutta, with government support. It was a bilingual publication, printed in both Persian and Urdu. However, it struggled to gain readership. The educated public at the time, regardless of religious background, largely read Persian. Urdu, though spoken widely by the masses, had not yet gained a foothold among the literate classes. Financial pressures eventually forced the paper to switch to Persian-only, revealing the stark gap between the linguistic habits of the elite and the colonial push for Urdu.

In Kashmir, the imposition of Urdu followed a similar pattern. Under the Dogra regime, aligned closely with British colonial structures, Urdu replaced Persian in official domains. This was not a natural progression but a deliberate intervention. The result was a linguistic displacement that severed Kashmir’s cultural ties with its Persianate past while marginalizing its native tongue, Kashmiri. The Dogras used Urdu to govern a region where the majority of people neither read nor spoke the language fluently. It became a language of bureaucracy and elite communication, while Kashmiri was reduced to domestic and informal use.

The consequences were severe. Kashmiri—a Dardic language with a unique phonetic, grammatical, and poetic tradition—was demoted to a secondary or even tertiary status. It was increasingly perceived as the language of the uneducated, the rural, and the rustic. This was not accidental. It was the product of a broader colonial strategy in which language became a tool to control, divide, and reshape society. And yet, despite these sustained pressures, Majj-Zev—our mother tongue—survives. It is the last fort of ‘being’ that endures when all else crumbles. Political institutions can be dismantled. Historical memory can be rewritten. But a mother tongue is embedded deep within the psyche of a people. It lives as emotion, as a lullaby, as a proverb, as memory. It cannot be abolished by law or decree because it is not a structure—it is a pulse.

I take immense pride in my mother tongue—Kashmiri. It is not merely a means of communication; it is a vessel of centuries-old wisdom, emotion, and cultural depth. What sets Kashmiri apart is its remarkable ability to endure. Despite relentless historical pressures, shifting political regimes, and the imposition of foreign linguistic orders, the language has never lost its structural beauty or its expressive soul. From the era of Lal Ded, the 14th-century mystic poetess whose verses still resonate in the Kashmiri conscience, to the present day, the Kashmiri language has preserved its literary continuity almost word for word. This unbroken chain is no accident. It reflects not only the resilience of a people but also the extraordinary richness of Kashmiri literary heritage. Our literary tradition is not a scattered archive of forgotten texts—it is a living, breathing reservoir of thought, metaphor, and philosophical inquiry. It is so vast, diverse, and profound that it can stand in meaningful comparison with the classical literatures of the world.

What makes Kashmiri uniquely powerful is the balance it naturally holds within itself. It is a language that can host mysticism and modernity, poetry and politics, spirituality and science, all within its textured syntax. Whether it’s the subtlety required to express a mystical revelation or the precision demanded by a scientific idea, Kashmiri rises to the task with ease and elegance. Its phonetics carry music; its metaphors, memory. It is a language born not of necessity but of inner life—a tongue shaped by snow-capped silence and river-borne dreams.

To lose such a language is not merely to lose a way of speaking—it is to lose a way of being. It is to sever the deep neural and cultural connections that bind a people to their past, to their land, and each other. Our survival, our dignity, and our cultural future depend on how we treat our mother tongue today. And despite centuries of neglect, displacement, and humiliation, Kashmiri survives. It is spoken in homes, sung in weddings, whispered in prayers, and etched into the rhythms of everyday life. It is not a relic of the past but a quiet force of continuity, refusing to vanish. Its endurance is a form of resistance—a quiet but potent refusal to be erased.

Yet, even in the literary and intellectual world, a quiet tragedy unfolds. Often, the reputation of a writer is built not on their sincere contribution to thought or knowledge but on their ability to craft ornate prose and navigate elite circles. If such flair is combined with an official title or academic position, their perceived literary stature grows exponentially, regardless of their substance. This valorization of style over substance is a dangerous trend. It fosters an environment where personality eclipses authenticity, and where true voices, especially those rooted in the mother tongue, are ignored or dismissed. The future of Kashmiri literature and culture must rest not on mimicry of the colonial past or dependence on externally imposed standards. It must be grounded in authenticity, in truth, and in the language that holds our collective memory. Our mother tongue is not merely a linguistic tool—it is the vessel of our consciousness, our metaphors, our stories, and our dreams. To reclaim it is not just an act of cultural revival—it is an act of survival.

(The author is an English literature student. Hailing from Tangmarg, he can be reached at tousifeqbal555@gmail.com)