Kargil, Ladakh and Kashmir: Role of Urdu and divisive politics-II
Hala
The plot to divide the people
Pakistan is also an adherent of this ideology and had tried to impose
Urdu on Bengali Muslims of erstwhile East Pakistan, leading to break
up of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh.
Imposition of Urdu would break a linguistic continuity and distance
the people of Kargil from Leh. In July 2003, the Congress-PDP
(People's Democratic Party) coalition government created a separate
development council for Kargil, with a strange name, "Ladakh
Autonomous Hill Development Council for Kargil". The People's
Democratic Party, headed by father and daughter duo, Mufti Mohammad
Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti, appointed a seven-member committee to
prepare a position paper on self-rule of Jammu and Kashmir.
Unfortunately and ironically, Pakistan is also an adherent of this
ideology and had tried to impose Urdu on Bengali Muslims of erstwhile
East Pakistan, leading to break up of Pakistan and creation of
Bangladesh.
Imposition of Urdu would break a linguistic continuity and distance
the people of Kargil from Leh. In July 2003, the Congress-PDP
(People's Democratic Party) coalition government created a separate
development council for Kargil, with a strange name, "Ladakh
Autonomous Hill Development Council for Kargil". The PDP, headed by
father and daughter duo, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti,
appointed a seven-member committee to prepare a position paper on self-
rule of Jammu and Kashmir (Chatterjee 2006). In a recent speech in New
Delhi, Mehbooba outlined her ideas about self-rule: "PDP would like
the state to be divided into three regions, Leh-Ladakh, Kashmir and
Jammu, each having its own legislature (Chatterjee 2006)."
Mehbooba has coined a new term 'Leh-Ladakh'. She is silent on Kargil.
The implications are ominous. Presumably Kargil would be merged with
Kashmir under one legislature. It should be noted that as a whole
Kargil district of Ladakh has a Muslim majority, although its Zanskar
sub-division is predominantly Buddhist. The process of separating the
Muslim-dominated area of Ladakh from Ladakh started early and
developed in four phases so far. The following are the 'landmark'
events in this process:
First Phase:
As has already been mentioned, it was Sheikh Abdullah who set the ball
rolling by creating the separate Muslim-majority district called
Kargil. Since then a terminological shift has been promoted in the
mass media. A practice has developed in the media to identify Leh
district alone as Ladakh, and treat Kargil as a separate entity
outside Ladakh. The latest war between India and Pakistan is called
Kargil war, instead of Ladakh war. A popular misconception has been
promoted all over India as if Kargil is not a part of Ladakh.
Second Phase:
In 2001, this process received a windfall in the form of the
"Sadbhavna" programme, launched by General Arjun Ray of the Indian
Army, in Kargil district (Hindustan Times 2001). The programme is a
praiseworthy initiative aiming to win the hearts and minds of the
people. However, as a part of the programme Urdu-medium schools are
being opened in the region and that is unfortunate, because the people
of Kargil are primarily Balti-Ladakhi speakers. There is a linguistic
continuum from Pakistan-occupied Baltistan (a part of the northern
areas of Jammu and Kashmir, with Skardu as capital) to Ladakh and
further east into Tibet. Ladakhi is a regional variant of western
Tibetan and Balti of Baltistan in turn is a variant of Ladakhi. Kazmi
(1996) a citizen of Baltistan (PoK) observes the following on the
relationship between Balti and Ladakhi:
"Apparently, Balti is, at the moment, cut off from its sister
languages of Ladakh but has 80-90 per cent of nouns, pronouns, verbs
and other literary and grammatical characters in common.... We can,
however, term Balti and Bodhi of Ladakh as separate dialects, but not
separate languages."
As far as script duality for the same language is concerned, the Balti-
Ladakhi pair is similar to the Urdu-Hindi pair. However, there are
major differences. Excepting verbs and pronouns, almost all vocabulary
of Indian origin (Sanskrit and non-Sanskrit) has been expelled from
Urdu and replaced by Persio-Arabic (Ghosh 1994, Ghosh and Kumar 2005).
That is not the case with Balti as vocabulary of Tibetan origin is
very much retained. The differences between Balti and Ladakhi are
mostly regional. Between Urdu and Hindi that is not the case, and the
differences between them are extensive and an all-India phenomenon.
Whatever view one takes, the language of Kargil is either Balti or
Ladakhi. Both Balti and Ladakhi are well-developed languages of Tibeto-
Burman origin. Maharaja Hari Singh imposed Urdu on a Kashmiri speaking
populace by starting Urdu primary schools. At least Kashmiri and Urdu
belong to the same North Indian family of languages and there is some
remote affinity. For instance, the verbs and pronouns are derivatives
of Sanskrit words in both Kashmiri and Urdu, as the table shows:
English Sanskrit Kashmiri Urdu
You twam tsa tum
He sah sa wah
Eat khad khun khana
Do karan karan karna
On the other hand, Balti/Ladakhi being of Tibeto-Burman family is as
far from Urdu as chalk is from cheese. Verbs, pronouns, nouns,
adjectives are all different. The uninformed and short-sighted move of
General Arjun Ray has interrupted a linguistic continuity from
Baltistan of PoK to Ladakh of India to western Tibetan plateau. In
fact imposition of Urdu on Kargil is bound to affect the morale of
Balti people in PoK who are struggling against Urdu imposition
themselves (Kazmi 1996). And it is likely to demoralize people of Leh
who are trying to earn a place for their language in the state of
Jammu and Kashmir and who too may be the next victim of Urdu hegemony.
Third Phase:
The third phase started when the present PDP-Congress coalition came
into power in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002. The Common Minimum Programme
(CPM) of the coalition says (Hindu 2002):
"The government shall grant full powers to the Autonomous Hill Council
for Leh, which has hitherto been deprived of its legitimate powers.
Efforts will be made to persuade the people of Kargil to accept a
similar Autonomous Hill Council for Kargil."
When the CMP was written, there was no Autonomous Hill Council for
Leh. There was only the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council
(LAHDC). Why did the two parties use this mischievous and deceitful
language? What was the ulterior motive? There is only one conclusion
that can be drawn. Both Congress and PDP were conspiring to
politically separate the Muslim-majority Kargil from Buddhist-majority
Ladakh. Another interpretation is possible-PDP set this as a condition
for alliance and the Congress swallowed it for its greed of political
power. It is noteworthy that there was no demand for a separate
council from the people of Kargil. Even then, a separate council was
being foisted on them from above. The intention was to create a
religio-political division where only a religious difference with
strong syncretic and even marital links between Buddhists and Muslim
existed. This action of the Congress is comparable to its political
move in Kerala in the 1950s and 1960s, whereby the ban on the Muslim
League was removed, a coalition government with it was formed and
eventually a Muslim-majority district of Malappuram was created.
The promise of the CMP was fulfilled in July 2003 when the coalition
Government formed the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for
Kargil (LAHDC for Kargil). A strange name indeed! It formed also the
Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for Leh (LAHDC for Leh).
Why such strange and tortuous names? If we call 'Kanpur Development
Authority' by the name Uttar Pradesh Development Authority for
Kanpur', it would be considered absurd. According to a bill passed in
Jammu and Kashmir Assembly an autonomous council is legally valid only
for Ladakh. Hence an entity called "Autonomous Development Council for
Kargil' would be legally invalid. This explains the ridiculous
contortions in nomenclature which is seemingly legally valid (although
I am not sure and it should be challenged in a court) and at the same
time serves the purpose of separation of Kargil. The religion-based
division of Ladakh has been extended to a sub-division of Kargil-only
three council seats out of 30 have been allocated to the
overwhelmingly Buddhist Zanskar subdivision. The aggrieved people of
Zanskar, both Buddhists and Muslims, boycotted the July 2003 election
to LAHDC-for-Kargil (Hindu 2003).
Fourth Phase:
The fourth phase has started with the declaration of Mehbooba Mufti
outlining her ideas about so-called "self-rule". Leh-Ladakh would get
a separate Legislative Assembly. But Kargil will likely be joined with
Kashmir under the jurisdiction of the Legislative Assembly at
Srinagar. If this scenario comes true, then the following is likely to
happen:
Leh-Ladakh Assembly will function in Ladakhi and Jammu Assembly will
function in Dogri. Kashmir will continue to be administered in Urdu.
It cannot possibly switch over to Kashmiri with Balti-speaking Kargil
on tow. So people of Kashmir will once again be deprived of the right
to education and administration in Kashmiri, their mother tongue. It
should be remembered that Kashmiris have always described Kashmiri as
their mother tongue, and not Urdu, in census after census. (This
should be contrasted with the fact that Muslims of Andhra and
Karnataka declare Urdu their mother tongue, although what they speak
can at best be called pidgin Urdu and they are more fluent in Telugu
and Kannada.)
If Kashmir retains Urdu and abandons Kashmiri, Muslim-majority Doda
district of Jammu is likely to demand to be separate form Jammu and
merged with Kashmir. It would be persuaded to opt for Urdu written in
Arabic script instead of Dogri written in Devnagari, although its
speech is Dogri. Little differences with Dogri will be invented and
separation will be demanded. PDP surely and even National Conference
probably would encourage this tendency with Congress as always playing
an opportunistic unprincipled role.
Conclusion
People of Baltistan (of PoK), Kargil and Leh, all parts of the
original Ladakh district, speak the same language, but employ two
different scripts, Ladakhi (Bodhi) and Arabic (Nasq). Pakistan has a
long-standing policy of imposing Urdu while suppressing vernaculars.
This stems from the language ideology that Urdu alone is the language
of the Muslims of the subcontinent. The language policy of the Jammu
and Kashmir government seems to be no different. It is busy
suppressing the use of the mother tongue in Kargil district. This
policy is unfair to the people of Kargil and particularly so to the
people of Zanskar subdivision who are predominantly Buddhist. Clever
steps are being taken to extend Kashmiri political hegemony over
Kargil to reinforce the Urdu hegemony. The result would be separation
of Kargil from Ladakh, where lie its racial and linguistic roots.
Kargil people would eventually lose their language.
(The author is a Professor and can be contacted at Aerospace
Engineering, IIT Kanpur, ku...@iitk.ac.in)