On the agenda of the ongoing monsoon session in Parliament is a bill to introduce Hindi, Kashmiri and Dogri as official languages in Jammu ...
On the agenda of the ongoing monsoon session in Parliament is a bill to introduce Hindi, Kashmiri and Dogri as official languages in Jammu and Kashmir, in addition to English and Urdu. “This has been done based on demand by the people,” Prakash Javadekar, Information and Broadcasting minister, told reporters in Delhi on September 2.
But the move has opened old and new faultlines in the region. Communities that speak Gojri, Pahadi and Punjabi are protesting against their exclusion. Both Gojri and Pahadi were recognised as regional languages in the erstwhile state, which was stripped of its special status in August 2019, and split into two union territories.
In the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, the inclusion of Hindi has renewed fears that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is pursuing an agenda of demographic change through its policies.
“Whose language is Hindi in Jammu and Kashmir?” asked Zubair Nazeer, a scholar who has extensively studied tribal communities in the region. “Historically and culturally, Hindi is not the language of any community in Jammu and Kashmir.”
Zaffar Iqbal Manhas, a leader of the Pahadi-speaking community and a former member of the Peoples Democratic Party, said the decision did not reflect conventional votebank politics. “If they [the BJP] wanted to appease ethnic...
