Rajdhani

Introduction

 

Pahari is a language of the Indo-Aryan family of languages¹  It drives its name from Pahar meaning" hills and mountains " for it is spoken over a very large area starting from Nepal and running throughout the foothills of the Himalayas, in the Hamachal Pardesh (Northern Indian province), the Indian controlled part of the state of Jammu Kashmir, the Pakistani controlled Jammu Kashmir and through out the Northern Pakistan, up to River Indus and Chitral², The language spoken in Pothwar in Northern Punjab is by all means Pahari language, deriving its so-called name from the Pothwari region which consists of four districts, Rawalpindi, Jhelum,, Chakwal and Attock³. It is called Pothwari in this region for much the same reason as the Pahari spoken in the district Mirpur (especially in Britain) is some time referred to Mirpuri or in Rajori Chibali and in Jammu Dogari and it commands many more regional names.

 

Pahari like many other languages of the world has seen rise and fall in the course of history,

It's written historical storey is as old and as complex as the language itself. Pahari was initially written in Landa script and landa is a form of Sharda which was invented by Buddhasits⁴. Sharda was a Buddhist university which is situated in Neelam valley (Kishan Ganga) in the Azad Jammu Kashmir. In this village there are remains of an ancient Budh university, a monastery and certain stupas⁵ quoting from Professor Buhler's indische palaeography (p56), Dr Grierson states that Sharda script was introduced by Kashmir⁶. Heim Chander (1088-1172), an eminent Chinese scholar, collected eight ancient manuscripts from the Sharda monastery in order to compile his new book of grammar entitled" Sada Heim Chander"⁷ The forests of Sharda exhibit a rich growth of paper trees locally called "Purzi" or " Bhoj pattar", that casts off paper-thin bark used for writing purposes, and now-a-days the holy men use it for writing talismans.

 

It can be said that arguably Sharda Pahari is the one of the oldest written language in South Asia and it has contributed in developing other languages old and modern including Urdu⁸. Pahari and other similar South Asian languages, most are not taught in the classroom but are very much alive within the people and overlap a lot through population's physical contact and interaction⁹, Along with other languages Pahari has suffered on the hands of foreign invaders, Pahari's erosion started with Greek invasion and rafts and rafts of invasions thereafter. The region has witnessed Pushtu, Farsi, Arabic, Punjabi, Urdu and English official languages domination. In Kashmir Pahari was and still is to certain extent written by Hindu business people in Landa script¹⁰ and has been kept alive from father to son.

 

Post 1947 Like Punjabi, Pahari has suffered from the division of India and the written forms got divided too in the shapes of Shah Mukhi and Gurmukhi broadly speaking. Punjabi seemed to have made some progress on the both sides of the border but Pahari in Jammu Kashmir got further suppressed through this neo- colonial status-co between Hindi and Persian scripts, However, recently there have been efforts made on both sides of Kashmir to revive the language and as a result of that, last ten years has witnessed many books being produced, these includes poetry, pros short stories, novels, nursery rhymes and people's folk stories. These are mainly written in Persian script. Most of this work began in Britain in the early 1990s. One might question, why Britain?

 

Most social commentators write that in Britain 80% to 90% of the so called Pakistanis are infect of Kashmiri origin¹¹ Professor Nazir Tabbasam in his paper Pahari sounds writes "People who emigrated to UK on Pakistani passports, 80% were of Kashmiri origin. They are quite distinct from the rest of the south Asians not only culturally and linguistically but ethnically too"¹² Similarly  99% of the Kashmiris  emigrated from the districts of Mirpur, Kotli, Bhimber, Pounch, Mehendar, Muzafrabad, Rajori, Jammu and Noshara, around 1% from the Valley, Gilgit, Baltistan and Ladakh/Kirgil. Thus 99% of the people of state of Jammu and Kashmir and northern India and Pakistan in Britain speak Pahari. This arguably makes Pahari the largest language in Britain after English i.e. more than 1 million, this makes Kashmiri community and Pahari speakers almost 2% of the UK population.

 

Pahari in Britain

 

The spoken language of nearly all Kashmiris in the UK is Pahari, and many are unable to read any language. Once settled in Britain, decision-makers in an attempt to make services accessible began to invest in interpreting and translation services. However the languages offered to people originating from South Asia have been limited to Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, and Gujrati. Very little reference has been made to Kashmiri community or Pahari; instead decision-makers have incorrectly tended to use Urdu or Punjabi to communicate with Britain's Kashmiri community. In such instances, members of the Kashmiri community unable to communicate in English have had to settle with another group's language. This had a significant impact in the way in which services have been delivered. A main factor for not providing Pahari as a language is because there has been no official recognition of the Kashmiri community residing in Britain and such accurate recognition on their language and communication needs.

 

With the decline in Britain's manufacturing industry in the 1970s, especially in the north and midland, the Kashmiri community was disproportionately disadvantaged compared to other minority ethnic groups. The economic impact upon the Kashmiri community has been profound with long term consequences. With reliance on large manufacturing industries for employment, racial discrimination in the job market and no appropriate opportunities given for training to explore other employment opportunities the Kashmiri community by the 1980s was economically devastated suffering from large levels of unemployment. This was despite the fact that this community had contributed to the economic success of Britain during the previous two-decades.

 

Learning and skills council invested a lot of money to train and skill people back in to employment, this included office work as well as trades like motor mechanics, plumbing, electricians, gardening and other practical semi skilled trades. To train unemployed people who's first language was not English. Learning and skills council introduced ESOL courses, where people were taught English before enrolling on to the trade or skill courses. ESOL was set up in recognised languages, Pahari was not one of them. Realising the gap, questions were asked and  answered by giving Kashmiris new name of "Mirpuri community" the community was Mirpuri and its language was Mirpuri too. Mirpuri than was identified as dialect of Punjabi. Therefore it was presumed that this group of people( Kashmiri community) was catered for, hence Kashmiris missed out on all employment opportunities created for BME groups.

 

However, British High Commission in Islamabad was quick to pick up the different language need of the Kashmiri community and employed Pahari speaking interpreters. This then was followed up by the BBC world and Asian radio net works. In 1990s a Pahari magazine called Chitka was launched from the north and there are quite a few Pahari writers in Britain who had their works published.

 

Today's British Kashmiri

 

Today's British Kashmiri can be seen driving taxi or running a take away, despite the economic shift towards self-employment, the second third and now even fourth generation Kashmiris are suffering from their parent's disadvantaged legacy. Many young British Kashmiris lack professional role models in their own community and the demographic location further perpetuates social/economic disadvantage. This growing community has unacceptable levels of unemployment (possibly 6 times more likely to be out of work) and is disproportionately more likely to be in the criminal justice system. Worst of all perhaps is the lack of identity. Self perpetuates a sense of not belonging unlike other groups. As a result, not only a significant socio/economic potential in Britain is being wasted but Kashmiri youngsters seeking acceptance and sense of belonging become an easy pray for right wing groups of one kind or an other, perhaps 1980s, 1990s, and turn of the century northern cities riots were related to Kashmiri un-recognition and Kashmiri youngsters frustration against discrimination and alienation. Despite that Kashmiri community is never mentioned in any government reports and Kashmiri youngster is not engaged at any level by community cohesion or other government consultative bodies.

 

Evidence from the commission for Racial Equality Runnymede Trust, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and academic suggest that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis suffer the most disadvantages in all aspects of life in Britain. This includes for example:-

 

?         More likely to be subject to racial harassment,

?         Less likely to obtain work (6 times likely to be unemployment)

?         Under-achievement in education

?         Living in over crowded conditions

?         Health inequalities

?         Low income per household

 

However, if the Kashmiri community's data was monitored in its own right and not mixed with Pakistanis, it would indicate that Kashmiri community is probably more disadvantaged than all of the other South Asian ethnic groups.

 

The Kashmiri community is likely to suffer racism like other BME groups and bigotry from other south Asian groups, similar to that of Irish community i.e. to an outsider the Irish are white, speak English, and are Christian why is there need to include Irish as a separate category for monitoring purposes. Kashmiri case is similar to the Irish case.

 

Interpretation/Translation

 

Most service providers until very recently have been under the impression that all south Asians speak either Hindi or Urdu but these trends are changing and the service providers have started making efforts to recognise their customer. Kashmiri community still continues to be marginalised and following are some of the examples of how non recognition effects Pahari speaking Kashmiri community in every day life:

 

Leeds health trust arguably the biggest in Europe, carried out a survey of its patients language needs in 1999,¹³    the internal audit report stated that over the last year, 3000 Urdu Mirpuri, 1000 Bangali Mirpuri and 4000 Punjabi Mirpuri interpretation assignments were carried out. This report was rightly challenged by Kashmiri groups in the city of Leeds. On inquiry it was found that:

 

?         The trust had very little knowledge of the Kashmiri community and it relied on Asian GPs, South Asian ethnicity advisers and Trust interpreters advice,

?         The Kashmiri community was the principle community which needed interpretation,

?         The interpreters pretended they could speak these peoples languages and gave it the name that suited them,

?         The Kashmiri community was not aware of the interpretation service and thought that these people ( interprets) were doing them a free favour,

?         Kashmiri community was never consulted about the services and there were never Pahari interpreters used at the consultation open days,

?         Few interpreters had monopoly on the interpretation service and they earned three times the salary of a midwife,

?         One interpreter would spend full day with a midwife and interpreter for all the south Asian languages, while having expertise in only one,

?         Most interpreters were inter related to GPs or people on various committees,

?         No complain was recorded by Kashmiri community, instead they brought their children for interpretation, very often the interpreters got through to  Kashmiri patients via the patient's children.

 

In 2001, the health trust and local authority employed a manager to improve the service, All the existing interpreters were tested for language ability, following were the results:

?         None of the interpreters spoke Pahari and they all failed institute of languages test when examined,

?         All interpreters claimed that the language was Mirpuri and it was dialect of one or the other but none was aware that Mirpuri was a dialect of Pahari,

?         All Punjabi and Urdu speaking interpreters complained about the test, some refused to take part saying it was not a language,

?         Pakistani and Muslim community leaders made very strong representations to Local Authority and health trust complaining about the language test, the argument used were:

>       We are all Muslims there is no need to recognise Pahari or Kashmiri community,

>       Recognising Pahari and Kashmiri for monitoring purposes was against Pakistan and Islam, a great lot of rhetoric was used and the complainant included some Kashmiris too.

 

However, Leeds city council and health trusts have recognised Kashmiri community and Pahari language and have included Kashmiri and Pahari in their monitoring system. Since the recognition many researches have been conducted especially by department of social services education and help the aged England.¹⁴  with clear special cultural and linguistic needs for the Kashmiri community.

 

Education

 

It is widely recognised that gender, ethnic origin, social and economic background are strongly associated with educational attainment and reflects a wide range of influence on pupils and effects opportunities for pupils. In terms of ethnicity it is now generally perceived that average levels of educational attainment have increased for all groups in UK but  at a slower rate for Bangladeshi and Pakistanis.

 

Whilst it is generally the case that some ethnic minorities are performing less well than the white peers a number of ethnic groups have , on average, higher levels of attainment than white groups  ( for example Indian and Chinese) and Pakistanis are not far behind but mixed with Kashmiris Pakistani average comes down very drastically. This seems to be the case in employment, housing and business.

 

It is believed that educational achievements of the pupils from Pakistani community living In Birmingham is low and has been a cause for concern for education providers, parents and Muslim community leaders and experts. Literature review suggests that mainstream education authorities failed to comprehend the cultural and educational needs of the ethnic minority childern¹⁵ 

 

The origin of the problem probably goes as far back as early 1960s when the need of pupil's culture and language was identified or dare I say misdiagnosed. The aim at that time was to teach newcomers (usually in their early teens) in English teaching centres by multi lingual teachers. The majority community was economic migrant from Kashmir primarily uneducated agrarian background. The multi lingual teachers were from urban areas of Pakistan and India they pushed down their cultural value base and languages on the illiterate communities i.e. Hindi and Urdu. The Kashmiri community was completely ignored and brushed aside and to this day is still struggling to regain its identity, culture and language, hence continues to be disadvantaged and marginalised.

 

Local authorities and education department locally and nationally produce advice, information and guidance for parents in very complex and technical English, which than is translated in to more complex Urdu, both of these languages are foreign to Pahari speaking Kashmiri community. In order to explain these complex documents, relevant authorities may make an effort to employ some Punjabi worker to interpret these complex documents by the way of one off meetings, with no real success, because again Punjabi is not the language, for rural Kashmiri population and mothers who play a pivotal role in children's achievement would not get the linguistically appropriate message.

 

Over the last few years, it has been noticed up and down the country that education department's ethnicity monitoring guide lines are very confusing in relation to Kashmiri community. It refers Kashmiris as Pakistani Mirpuris, Mirpuris, Punjabi Mirpuris and Kashmiris. It only suggest two things, one the Education ministry is not aware of the Kashmiri community and two the Local and national ethnicity advisors in the education department are deliberately trying to confuse the issue.

 

The above factors of none engagement and misinformation give rise to confusion and mistrust and create a sense of alienation and marginalisation to the Kashmiri community, which results in none attendance of the parents evenings and other important education meetings as well as enhancing inability to help their children in their educational achievement. Hence, Kashmiri children continue to suffer.

 

None recognition of the Kashmiri cultural valuable and linguistic needs of both parents and children (pupils) resulting in underachievement, some times is explained to the authorities that these Mirpuris are not interested in education and like gypsies have no desire to be educated. While the fact is very different. Kashmiri parents do not understand the system and have never been consulted, involved, engaged or explained the system. Other Asian urban middle classes continue to deny Kashmiri ethnicity, language and culture. Aided by the service providers other agendas such as Muslim, Urdu, we are all Pakistanis and other wishful norms are pushed on to Kashmiri pupils and parents which results in further confusion, alienation and underachievement and at the same time job for the boys culture continues.

 

Collapse of manufacturing industry resulted in very high unemployment in inner city areas of Britain. It seems that Kashmiris manual workers felt the brunt of it. There had been many government drives to re-train the work force. Most of the Kashmiris were either first generation migrants or joined their extended families and had very little or no command of English. Learning and skill council invested a lot of money to teach English, followed by a skill/trade.

 

In Rochdale Kashmir Youth Project (KYP) specialises in Ethnic training, has been in the business for the last twenty five years. Recently they wrote to Learning and Skill council saying¹⁶, "the majority of our clients on the ESOL courses are of Kashmiri origin, who's mother tongue is Pahari. Pahari is not recognised by the Learning and skill council, therefore we have to teach people in line with the existing curriculum, which is Urdu to English. Thus in the last twenty years, despite Kashmiri people  attending ESOL courses they have learnt nothing. Because both Urdu and English are foreign languages to them. This not only results in waste of tax payers money but effects their off spring's educational achievement aspirations and parents ability to support their children in educational achievement.

 

Non-recognition disadvantages

 

Kashmiri community Started coming to Britain straight after the Second World War, and worked in textile and steel industry as well as took up other manual unskilled labour jobs. They settled in industrial areas of northern cities and midland. It is widely believed that Bradford has more than 80,000 Kashmiri population while Birmingham has more than 100,000. Fifty years on still if one looks at both cities white collar workforce and taxis and take Awa's. The picture seems to be very clear in both cities:

 

Kashmiris are no where to be seen in local authority, health and other public service employment, Very over represented in taxis, take ways and other lower paid jobs, and suffer from high unemployment, over crowding, drugs, crime and ill health.

 

There seem to be similarities in inner cities areas and particularly South Asian communities between Bradford and Birmingham, in terms of ethnic white collar workforce, educational attainment, level of unemployment, taxis/takeaways, riots, drugs misuse, representation in the penal system, health including mental health, while places like Leicester and continue to do well. Is it just a coincident or Kashmiri none-recognition is having profound effects on  identity less Kashmiri youth in all walks of life.

 

Truancy rate in Birmingham and Bradford seems to be higher in so called Pakistanis than most similar cities and other BME groups, and children often are called upon by parents and grand parents as well as extended family members; aunts/uncles to accompany them to hospitals, GP surgeries and most other offices when they should be in schools.

 

Kashmiris miss out on most state benefits¹⁷ and either do not receive any advice at all or only make use of advice at the crisis point. This includes careers, criminal justice, state benefits, health initiatives like smoking, drugs, aids and mental health problems. They often are seen to resort to Pirs (the talisman), often with fatal consiquances.¹⁸

 

Good business sense

 

Since the inclusion of ethnic categories in the 1991 census, decision- makers at national and local levels have used collated data to ensure the socio/economic needs of Britain's minority ethnic communities are met. It is also an important tool to ascertain the extent of discrimination and disadvantage experiences by Britain's Minority ethnic communities.

 

Over the last decade public and private bodies alike have used ethnic monitoring to set targets in order to continually improve employment as well as service delivery opportunities to all 'recognised' minority ethnic groups. Evidence gathered from ethnic monitoring has been used by various decision makers to inform their policies and strategies. For example Bangladeshis in seventies were seen as East Pakistanis and their national language was recognised as Urdu, until 1991 census there was no real data on this community, hence service planners and providers found it difficult to include them in their policies and strategies in any meaningful way but since the 1991 census information and accurate monitoring at the local and national levels have enabled all relevant bodies to react to Bangladeshi special needs and underachievement in a positive manner. It can be seen that all over the country the quality of life for Bangladeshis have started improving and in places like tower Hamlet Bangladeshi educational attainment has turned on its head for the better.

 

Shifts towards the 'knowing customer' approach by public bodies such as local authorities in light of best value and modernisation has further high lighted the importance of ethnic monitoring. Progressive local authorities have realised that accurate ethnic monitoring reflecting the origin and the size of local communities is a key management  tool to deliver good quality services tailored to meet the diverse needs of 'recognised; minority ethnic groups.

 

No doubt since the inception of ethnic monitoring 'recognised; minority ethnic communities as indicated in the 1991 categories have benefited socially and economically. However despite the benefits of ethnic monitoring there remains a major gap with a very large ethnic group omitted from the official ethnic categories. This group is Britain's Kashmiri community, which numbers between half to one million and constitutes possibly the second largest ethnic group from South Asia. An accurate figure can only be ascertained if Kashmiri was recognised as separate ethnic category. In the absence of Kashmiri category, the overwhelming majority of people of Kashmiri origin have incorrectly been identified as 'Pakistani' ethnic origin. Recent Kashmir national Identity Campaign (KNIC) sample researches show that a very large number of Kashmiris did not participate in the 1991 or 2001 census and a help the aged research in to Kashmiri elderly needs is currently conducted with this question.¹⁹

 

With no clear option given for members of Britain's Kashmiri community to indicate their 'true ethnicity' decision-makers have gathered skewed and distorted information. This in turn may have led to the under usage of services and limited employment opportunities for the very large ethnic group. Anecdotal evidence from academics and policy think tanks suggest that members of the Kashmiri community are more likely to experience racial discrimination and disadvantage than any other ethnic group. Not recognising Britain's Kashmiri community in ethnic monitoring has further compounded this disadvantage and three generations on , Kashmiri community continues to under achieve in all walks of life and continues to experience marginalisation.

 

Recommendations and issues for consideration

 

Decision Making

 

Education department should monitor its pupils ethnicity and mother tongue very closely and include Kashmiri in all its monitoring systems.

 

There seems to be a lot of confusion within the teachers, education advisors and curriculum setters around its customer nationally and in Birmingham specifically as to who their customer is? Asian, Pakistani, Muslim are the main buzz words but within that all South Asian groups are recognised except Kashmiri and their mother tongue Pahari with Mirpuri dialect.

 

All relevant people need awareness and training this includes teachers, education planners and providers and the community itself. Especially the community around home work, school attendance, holidays, need for extra reading and leisure activities and career planning.

 

Appropriate method of awareness should be adopted for example open days for teachers and audio/video tapes for the parents because written materials would be useless, known from the previous experiences.

 

Employment opportunities for the Pahari speakers should be high lighted in various industries for example interpretation/translation field, front line staff in local authority, health, financial sector, sales personal including Tele sales, mortgages, insurance and in all other statutory voluntary sectors, customer's language is a very distinct advantage.

 

The education authority should look at including G.C.S.E 'O' and 'A' levels in the national curriculum (Pahari) as vocational skills. At the moment Kashmiri pupils who speak English at school and mother tongue Pahari at home, learn Arabic at the Mosque are given Urdu as a vocational choice which they find not only difficult but useless in view of the biggest language help demand coming from Pahari/Mirpuri speaking Kashmiri community.

 

Inclusion of Pahari at secondary school level, coupled with customer's language recognition will enhance potential employment chances of Kashmiri youngsters. This needs to be put across to Kashmiri parents in such a way that they feel valued and included.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Ref1      Asher R E, Simpson J.M.Y, editor of the encyclopaedia of languages and linguistics,

Vol. 3, page 1661, pergmon press Ltd. Oxford England, 1994, masica, C. P. ,Indo-Aryan"

Ref2      Ali Adalat, Pahari in United Kingdom- A presentation paper researched especially for Leeds  Language Link and presented at the national conference held by cintra at Warwick university on September 14, 2001- page 1

Ref3      Tabassam, M Nazir,  A Phonological Analysis of Pahari language- A research paper written under the supervision of J.M.Y. Simpson the senior lecturer in the department of English language , University of Glasgow, the sarosh, Golden jubilee number,2003, page 397

Ref4      Dr Raja Naserullah Khan Nassar, Linguistic Analysis of Pahari language- An extract from third chapter of author's PhD thesis presented to the department of Urdu, University of Karachi, Pakistan, 2002, page 1

Ref5      Ibid-page2

Ref6      Grierson, Dr. the Imperial Gazetteer of India, The India empire new edition Vol.-page 356-7

Ref7      Nasar, Dr Raja Naserullah Khan, Analysis of Pahari language- An extract from third chapter of author's PhD thesis presented to the department of Urdu, University of Karachi, Pakistan, 2002, page 2

Ref8      Ibid.-page 400

Ref9      Tabassam, M Nazir, A Phonological Analysis of Potohari/Mirpuri Language- A research paper written under the supervision of J.M.Y. Simpson English language section University of Glasgow, the sarosh, golden jubilee number, 2003, page 399

Ref10    Nasir, Dr Raja Naserullah Khan, Linguistic Analysis of Pahari Language-Third chapter of author's PhD thesis, university of Karachi, Pakistan, 2002 page 3

Ref11    Professor Ballard, a view from Mirpur, university of Leeds research paper 1995,Dr Nasreen Ali- A paper on Kashmiri Diaspora and politics of identity in Britain 2004

Ref. 12  Tabassam, M, Nazir:         A phonological Analysis of Pothwari/Mirpuri language-A research paper written under the supervision, English language section university of Glasgow, the Sarosh, golden jubilee number, 2003, page 399

Ref13    Zara Farsi a research consultant: An audit report on the ethnicity and language needs of the service users in the Leeds health trusts 1999

Ref14    Abdul Khan: a feasibility study report, Improving educational Achievement for the BME children, Audit A Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Pakistani, 2003.

Dr Nasreen Ali, Kashmiri elderly needs research, Leeds social services and Primary care trust 2004

 

Ref15    stone, 1981, Chevannes and Reeves, 1987; Zulifiqar, 1997, cited in hallet al.2002,page 400

Ref16    Kashmir Youth Project (KYP) internal achievement audit paper sent to learning and skill council regional office Manchester, 2004, by Ismail Fullet, training consultant

Ref17    Community and Legal Services: Yorkshire and the Humber Community and Legal services consultation findings on hard to reach communities 2001

Ref. 18 XvY Oldham case

Ref.       Dr Mohammed Ayub, Kashmiri elderly needs, their culture language and ethnicity recognition in developing appropriate services, Help the aged Yorkshire and Humberside region 2004