KALASH – THE VALLEY OF KAFIRS

KALASH – THE VALLEY OF KAFIRS

Προστέθηκε από 24grammata

Minority: Kalash
Country: Pakistan
Author: Rabia Shahid
How would it feel to be part of a culture that is practiced by just 3000 people in a global population of billions? The Kalash culture is indeed unique. Situated in the midst of a Muslim majority population, the three little villages of Kalash are an excellent example of the preservation of a community which is distinct in its ethnicity, language, religion and culture.

The Kalasha community is the smallest minority in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The 1973 Constitution of Pakistan under Article 260 only recognizes religious minorities, ignoring the existence of other types of minorities. Kalash is located at a height of 1900 to 2200 meters in the Hindu Kush mountain range between the Afghan border and Chitral valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province , Pakistan. It primarily consists of the three villages of Birir, Bumburet and Rumbur, locally known as “Kafristan” (land of the infidels, coming from the word Kafir which is an Islamic term for an unbeliever). The valleys are situated to the southwest of the town Chitral at a distance of 40, 43 and 36 kilometers respectively.

Historically, Kafristan included the region of present day Nuristan in Afghanistan and the three Kalash valleys. It is believed that in 1320 the population of the Kafirs was 200,000. This has now reduced to a mere three to four thousand. In 1895, Amir Abdul Rahman, the King of Afghanistan, conquered the Afghan region of Kafristan and forced the Kafirs to convert to Islam. It was at that time that the Afghan Kafirs migrated to the Chitral valley to avoid threats of conversion. The people of Chitral gave them a warm welcome, allowing the community to exist and practice their religion and culture without any restraint. According to Israr-ud-Din (1969), the Kalash ruled Southern Chitral for around three hundred years, until they were overtaken by the Khowar speakers. Thereafter, some Kalash retreated to the valleys they occupy today and some became Khowar speakers and converted to Islam. The cordial relationship between the Chitralis and the Kalash people who refused to come under the religious and political influence of the Khowars exist today, even though radical Islamization of the country has posed some challenges for them. As per Kalash custom, once a person converts to Islam he or she is banished from the community and cannot revert. Today the number of Kalasha speaking converts living in the vicinity of the valleys exceeds the number of the original polytheistic Kalasha.

Origin of the Kalash community in Pak-Afghan region
The historic origins of this community are shrouded in mystery and controversy. Different theories exist as to the origin of the Kalash people, the most popular and grand being that they are descendants of Alexander the Great. The other two theories propose that they are an indigenous population of South Asia, or as suggested in Kalash folk songs and epics that their ancestors migrated to Afghanistan from “Tsiyam”, which is identified by some anthropologists as the area of Tibet and Ladakh.

There are many pieces of evidence presented by all schools of thought in this matter, making it difficult to trace the true origin of this minority. The Greek influence is found in the architecture, music, games, food, wine, and even in the blond hair and blue eyes of the Kalash. Yet at the same time certain genetic studies, like the study by Rosenberg, have come to the conclusion that this race is a separate aboriginal population with little influence from outsiders. Another genetic study “Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation (2008)” also came to a similar conclusion and categorized the Kalasha population as a separate group of people.

The Kalash Language – no written documentation
Kalash is a Dardic language which belongs to the Indo Aryan Group of the Indo-Iranian group of languages, which is itself a sub group of the larger Indo-European Group. Kalash is further categorized into the Chitral sub-group of languages, next to only one other language, Khowar. Though the two languages are different, they nonetheless share some similarities, and due to the increased interaction between the native speakers of these two languages there are now more bilingual people speaking both Khowar and Kalash as there were in the past.

The most distinct characteristic of the Kalash language, along with some other local languages of the Chitral District, is that it is purely oral and has no written manuscript. Thus all the folklore, customs and traditions have been handed down from generation to generation through word of mouth without any written documentation. Absence of a written manuscript, coupled with the fact that around four thousand people speak this language, has placed it on UNESCO’s list of critically endangered languages.

However, the people of Kalash maintain great pride in their language and the usage of this language has not decreased in the Kalash valleys over the passage of time. It is normal to see Kalash people interacting in their language in their homes, streets and markets. The most popular second language with the Kalash people is Khowar, but it is only used by people who go outside the Kalash valley for business or work, thus women and children are in a majority of the cases monolingual.

Recently many attempts have been made by local Kalash people in cooperation with foreign NGO’s to preserve the Kalash language via its documentation. In 2000, Taj Khan Kalash, a local Kalashi, organized the first Kalash Orthography Conference in Islamabad. Working in collaboration with international linguists and researchers, the first alphabet book of Kalash language in Roman script was published. Efforts are now being made to teach the Kalash people how to adjust to this evolutionary change in their language and learn how to write it. Significant research has taken place in the codification of this language; the dictionary of the codified Kalash language is even available online today, increasing the possibility for linguists and researchers to study this language in more detail.

Despite efforts to preserve the language, the community faces tough challenges in preserving it for future generations. It was in 1989 that the government allowed the Kalash to use their language as the medium of instruction, despite the uniform syllabus rule in the country. The majority of the teachers are Khowar native speakers, resulting in the instruction language to be Khowar rather than Kalasha. Thus, the major logistic hurdle in the teaching and preservation of the language is a lack of schools teaching the Kalash language and using it as a medium of instruction.

Kalash Culture: Festivals and Purity
The Kalash culture has been the centre of fascination for tourists, the British, and many anthropologists for years. Compared to the conservative Islamic majority, the Kalash valley, which is well protected within the mountains of Hindu Kush, is the home of polytheists for whom dance, wine and mingling between the sexes is not a taboo.

Nature plays a spiritual role in the lives of the Kalash people and this is reflected in the gods they worship and the customary festivals of the community. Among many festivals celebrated, the three main ones are the Joshi festival celebrated in May, the Uchau festival celebrated in autumn, and the most important Chaumos festival celebrated for two weeks at the winter solstice. Festivals are a way to offer thanks to the gods for the abundant natural resources gifted to the people of the valley. The Kalash people like to celebrate, and a typical festival involves singing, dancing, offering bread, cheese, meat or wine, and at times a sacrifice. The women of the community take active part in the singing and dancing at the festivals. Unlike Muslim societies, there is no concept of segregation in the Kalash society. Men and women freely interact with each other. Women are free to choose their husbands, while sex and love affairs are a common occurrence.

Kalash women are easily distinguishable due to their unique dress. They always wear a long black gown stretching on until their ankles. The gown is adorned with colorful beads and cowrie shells and accessorized by bead necklaces coiled around the neck, accompanied by an ornamental headdress. Men wear the traditional national dress of Pakistan with a woolen waistcoat.

The Kalash culture is very particular about the pure and impure. A particularly intriguing tradition is the tradition of Bashli. Bashli is the tradition of sending menstruating women and the ones giving birth to a special home. They can only come out of the home after the menstrual or child birth period is over. During such a state a woman is considered impure. Gods are considered pure, and between impure women and pure gods there are degrees of pure entities. A man is considered more pure than a woman, and an innocent boy would be more pure than an adult. There are also designated pure areas inside houses where women cannot go because they are considered impure.

Discrimination and attempts to convert to Islam
Kalash is a pastoral community which is heavily dependent upon agriculture and livestock. Over the years tourism has also become a major source of income for the Kalash people. However, generally the area remains underdeveloped due to its remote location and also because of the apathy of the authorities. The Kalash people are poor and face discrimination when it comes to jobs. Money that comes in from tourism seldom comes in the hands of Kalash people as majority of the hotels in the vicinity are owned by non-Kalash.

Availability of cheaper alternatives, coupled with poverty, is endangering the use and production of rich Kalash gowns worn by women, and of certain foods and drinks, especially the production of wine, which is often expensive. Infrastructure is weak as there are not enough roads, hospitals, high schools and universities for the Kalash. This forces many families to convert to Islam; a trend which is detrimental to the existence of the Kalash. The religious sites of worship are also in danger due to attacks by Islamic fundamentalists and a lack of funds for maintenance.

Lack of media causes discrimination
The discrimination is allowed to continue due to the absence of any medium of communication that would connect the Kalash communities with the outside world. There are no Kalasha newspapers, radio or TV stations. Other than a few websites personally made by some Kalash individuals, there is no official presence of the Kalash community in the media in the form of a group or organization. Any development in the area of preservation of the valley and its culture has primarily come from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and international aid groups interested in the region. Major aid and development is devoted to improving and facilitating cultural festivals, tourist information and environmental protection measures. According to Saifullah Jan, an activist who has represented the Kalash people at many forums, more resources need to be devoted to basic infrastructure like schools, roads, and health facilities to ensure the survival of these indigenous people. Also, less interference should be made into matters of farming and irrigation techniques, which according to him are something that the people are already well versed in.

Bibliography:
1. SOCIOLINGUISTIC SURVEY OF NORTHERN PAKISTAN VOLUME 5 LANGUAGES OF CHITRAL. Kendall D. Decker 1992. National Institute of Pakistani Studies Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics.
2. The Kalash – Protection and Conservation of an Endangered Minority in the Hindukush Mountain Belt of Chitral, Northern Pakistan. IUCN – The World Conservation Union.
3. Minority Rights Group International, Report on Religious Minorities in Pakistan, by Dr. Iftikhar H. Malik.
4. Enclaved knowledge: Indigent and indignant representations of environmental management and development among the Kalasha of Pakistan. Peter Parkes, University of Kent, Department of Anthropology, United Kingdom 1999
5. THE KALASHA PAKISTAN) WINTER SOLSTICE FESTIVAL. Alberto Cacopardo and Augusto Cacopardo Liceo Scientifico “G. Ulivi” Borgo San Lorenzo. Ethnology, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Oct., 1989), pp. 317-329. University of Pittsburgh- University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.
6. Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India. Noah A. Rosenberg, Saurabh Mahajan, Catalina Gonzalez-Quevedo, Michael G. B. Blum1, Laura Nino Rosales, Vasiliki Ninis, Parimal Das, Madhuri Hegde, Laura Molinari, Gladys Zapata, James L. Weber, John W. Belmont, Pragna I. Patel.
7. Worldwide Human Relationships Inferred from Genome-Wide Patterns of Variation. Jun Z. Li, Devin M. Absher, Hua Tang, Audrey M. Southwick, Amanda M. Casto, Sohini Ramachandran, Howard M. Cann, Gregory S. Barsh, Marcus Feldman, Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza, Richard M. Myers.
8. Proceedings of the third International Hindu Kush Cultural Conference – A minority perspective on the history of Chitral: Katore rule in Kalash Tradition, Peter Parkes

Source: http://www.24grammata.com/?p=16415

The Kalash in quarantine

The Kalash in quarantine

Zubair Torwali Saturday, July 05, 2014
From Print Edition

Hardly would there be a gallery in Pakistan where the colourful portraits of the uniquely beautiful Kalash women are not displayed. At every hotel one can see pictures of the Kalash girls in their traditional attire.

The Kalash culture is among the few things Pakistan can boast of as a tourist attraction. The print media carries features on the Kalash, sometimes with some poorly researched description of their traditions, rituals and festivals.

The Kalash are usually termed as very mysterious people. Some researchers trace their history back to Alexander the Great by asserting that they are the descendants of Alexander’s soldiers who were left in the area. However, latest research based on the archaeological findings in Chitral and Swat suggests that the Kalash tribe is the remnant of the Dards – an ancient nation that occupied northern Pakistan, northern Afghanistan and Kashmir.

There is a great similarity of lexicon, syntax and grammar of the Kalasha language with that of the Dardic languages spoken by people in the region. Forced conversion in the wake of invasions by outsiders compelled the Dards to quit their indigenous worldview and shift to Hinduism, Buddhism and later to Islam. There are still many ethnic groups in the region that converted to Islam just three or four centuries ago.

Among these ethnic groups the present Kalash people have still retained their own worldview to some extent. On the one hand they are unique and add to the cultural diversity of Pakistan – and consequently to the tourism industry – while on the other they are the signposts of a lost history.

Owing to their unique traditions and way of life they are presented to the world with apparent pride. But what is missing is care, respect and development by the state.

The first time I visited the valley was in 2007. Almost seven years later I, unfortunately, have seen no improvement in the lives of the Kalash.

The Kalash people, who are now hardly 4,000 in number, are virtually living in fearful quarantine. They are the most disadvantaged members of our society who languish in utter misery, extreme social pressure and fear.

The Kalash Valley borders with north Afghanistan where the Taliban rule. The Taliban recently issued a video threat to the Kalash and other tribes in Chitral asking for complete conversion or get ready for the worst. The Kalash people are too scared to move freely in their mountain pastures where the Taliban slaughtered a Kalash youth and snatched over 1000 sheep.

The Kalash are the soft victims of a certain mindset that is hell bent on targeting the Kalash faith.

The predicament of the Kalash doesn’t end here. They are very resentful of the tourists, particularly Pakistanis, who visit their valley – not for any anthropological study. Most of these tourists merely go there for liquor and other such activities. The young girls of the area are now tired of posing for pictures while the children have begun to beg money from those who take their photos. The kalash women are also harassed by these outsiders.

The Pakistani government treats the Kalash people as show pieces. The culture, language and tradition of the Kalash are under threat and there seems no effort on the part of the government to preserve their language, culture and faith.

The government of Greece used to take initiatives to help the Kalash but since the worst depression hit Greece it has abandoned welfare or developmental work here.

Fear, pressure, stigma, neglect and poverty have become the fate of the Kalash people. If Pakistan wants to have a respectable international image, it must take measures to protect its minorities.

The writer heads IBT, an independentorganisation dealing with education and development in Swat.Email: ztorwali@gmail.com 
Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-260025-The-Kalash-in-quarantine

Linguistic Diversity in NWFP

Linguistic Diversity in NWFP

Manzoor Ali Shah

The NWFP has always been in limelight, but for wrong reasons. From the British raj’s Afghan wars in eighteenth century to Russian invasion in 1979 and American ouster of Taliban from Kabul in 2002, NWFP had been pivotal to the imperialistic designs, as it provides road access to Afghanistan. Later, the emergence of local Taliban and militancy, itself a product of 30 years long Afghan war, put the Frontier on the map of world, as the bastion of terrorism.

The media stereotyping put the beautiful aspects of its culture, history and people on the backburner and nowadays world knows the people of the Frontier as mere suicide bombers and terrorists. However, there are many a remarkable traits and cultural aspects, which only the Frontier could claim and linguistic diversity of the province is one of such traits.

There are around 69 languages are spoken in Pakistan, 26 out of these spoken in NWFP, and 12 languages in Chitral district alone. According to Frontier Language Institute (FLI) Bateri (20,000), Chillaso (2,000), Gowro (200) and Kohistani (200,000) are spoken in Indus Kohistan.

Chitral district, according to renowned Norwegian linguistic Georg Morgenstierne, was the area with the highest linguistic diversity in the world. The languages give the district a unique flavor of socio-cultural richness and ethno-linguistic diversity. Dameli (2,000), Gawar-Bati (200), Kalasha (3,000), Khowar (200,000), Palula (2,000), Wakhi (2,000), Yidgha (2,000) and Kam-Kataviri (2,000) are the languages spoken in district.

Kalasha is the mother tongue of the famed and mysterious race of Kalasha living in the valleys of Rambur, Bomboret and Berir, while Kam-Kataviri is of the Nuristani people. Nuristanis are the people believed to be subject of a Kipling story “The Man Who Would Be King” which was adapted as motion picture starring Sean Connery in 1975. Unlike Kalasha who are known as the black Kafirs (infidels) due to the black outfit they wear; Nuristanis are known as Red Kafirs due to the red color of their skin.

While, Domakki (200) Hunza, Shina (200,000) Gilgit, Balti (200,000) Baltistan, Burushaski (20,000) Hunza, Nagar and Yasin, Kashmiri, Kundal Shahi and Pahari-Potwari are spoken in Northern Areas and Azad Kashmir.

Gwari (20,000) is spoken in Swat and Upper Dir, while Torwali (20,000) and Ushojo (200) are spoken in Swat, while Kalkoti (2,000) is spoken in Dir Kohistan and Ormuri (2,000) is spoken in South Waziristan.

Pashto and Gojari are spoken throughout the region and Hindko is spoken in Peshawar, Kohat and Kashmir. However, as most of these languages are spoken by small communities, therefore, qualify for categories of languages near extinction and threatened languages and it is need of the hour to preserve this marvelous part of our ethno-linguistic heritage.

* Number within brackets shows number of speakers in excess of the number.

Source: http://pakistaniat.com/2008/05/07/linguistic-diversity-in-nwfp/?cp=3 accessed on July 2, 2012

Battle of survival: Watching the tongues slip into extinction

Battle of survival: Watching the tongues slip into extinction

By Manzoor Ali

A classic case of irony.

While lawmakers table ‘ethno-linguistic’ basis for the creation of new provinces; in hindsight, the debate renders itself preposterous given the fact that 28 of the languages across the country are dying out.

Preservation seems to be one item missing from the to-do lists of lawmakers.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and other northern areas of the country are host to about half of languages spoken in Pakistan — a significant majority of which have been listed as ‘endangered’.

The United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Atlas of the World Languages in Danger documents around 28 Pakistani languages as endangered in various categories. The UNESCO Atlas lists six of these languages as ‘severely endangered’, 15 as ‘definitely endangered’ and seven as ‘vulnerable’.

Dying out

According to the UNESCO report, among the languages Pakistan could potentially lose are: Khowar spoken in Chitral and parts of Gilgit with an estimated number of 220,000 speakers left; Burushaski spoken in Nagar Hunza which has 87,000 speakers left; Maiya in Indus Kohistan with 220,000 speakers left; Purik is mainly spoken in Kashmir; however, data regarding the exact number of speakers is not available.

Furthermore, Bashkarik is majorly spoken in Swat and Dir by around 40,000 people, Bateri on the east bank of Indus Kohistan with 29,000 speakers, Bhadarvi along the Line of Control in Kashmir with 66,198 speakers, Gawar Bati in Chitral with 9,500 speakers, Kati in Nuristan and Chitral by 18,700 people, Kundal Shahi in Neelum Valley with just 500 speakers, Orumuri in South Waziristan with a 1,000 speakers, Palula in Chitral with 8,600 speakers, Savi in Chitral and Afghanistan with 3,000 speakers and Torwali in Swat is spoken by around 60,000 people.

Similarly, Chilasso is spoken in Indus Kohistan with around 2,000 speakers left, Dameli in Chitral with 5,000, Domaki in Gilgit with 500, Gowro in Indus Kohistan with around 200, Kalasha in Chitral with 5,000, Kalkoti in Dir Kohistan with around 4,000, Ushuju in Swat with 2,000, Wakhi along Wakhan corridor with 75,000, Yidgah in Chitral with 5,500 and Zangskari whose exact number of speakers are not available.

No preservation

However, Forum for Language Initiative (FLI) Programme Manager Mohammad Zaman Sagar has questioned the authenticity of the figures. Zaman told The Express Tribune that there is a Badeshi dialect in Swat, which is on the verge of extinction, has only two speakers left.

He added that the number of speakers of the Gowro language are stated to be around 40,000, while the total population of Kalam stands at around 70,000.

“Some of these figures are as old as 1970s,” he said.

Zaman believes lack of documentation to be a major hurdle in the preservation of these languages. According to him, only Khowar, Palula and Kalasha have been documented for in Chitral out of more than a dozen languages spoken in the region; only Gowro and Torwali have been documented for in Indus Kohistan and Swat out of around six languages; and only Indus Kohistani and Sheena have been documented for in Indus Kohistan out of as many as six languages.

The FLI programme manger said that even on the national level, proper documentation has only been conducted of around 20 languages.

He said that Yidgha in Lotkuh was under threat of extinction with hardly 1000 speakers left, while Badeshi and Ushuju in Swat, Gowro and Bateri in Indus Kohistan, Domaki in Gilgit and Kundal Shahi in Kashmir were also endangered.

Zaman lamented government apathy towards these languages and said: “We will only be able to express our sorrow, after a language dies down.”

Restive frontiers

Lack of an official body monitoring preservation is not the only obstacle. Militancy in the tribal belt has also created significant stumbling blocks for the preservation of these languages — with Ormuri in South Waziristan as a classic victim.

Unofficial figures state that Ormuri is spoken by around 10,000 peoplein the the Kaniguram area of the South Waziristan — a remote village in Mehsud tribe’s heartland.

“The number of Orumuri speakers is about 10,000,” said Zaman, adding that a majority of locals who used this language have been displaced due to militancy — scattering them across the country.

“Within a community, a language is automatically preserved when you speak it, but when a group is displaced, the chances of that language being abandoned or dying out are much higher,” Zaman said.

Lack of govt support

Fakhruddin Akhundzada, a language activist belonging to Chitral and associated with the FLI, was of the view that the lack of government support was the basic hurdle in preservation of these languages.

“Unlike Urdu, which is language to only six percent of the population, no other language gets any attention from the government,” he said.

He pointed out that there was no law at the federal or provincial level to encourage and preserve these languages except a recent effort by the K-P government to set up a language authority.

However, Akhundzada believes that the advent of social media and the telecommunication revolution maybe be serving as a blessing in disguise for these dying languages.

“Most of these languages do not have any script; however, use of Romanised versions by many people in short messaging service (SMS), chatting and Facebook, have recently risen,” he said.

It seems though, without concerted efforts on the part of the country as a whole, we may very well not hear the sound of these languages again.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2012.

Source:http://tribune.com.pk/story/339414/battle-of-survival-watching-the-tongues-slip-into-extinction/

Documenting the Kalasha Language, Some Challenges and Solutions (Research paper)

Documenting the Kalasha Language, Some Challenges and Solutions

Note: You can download this file to read it clearly.

Retroflex (consonant) Harmony in Kalasha

Retroflex (consonant) Harmony in Kalasha

Research Paper

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The last breaths of Kalasha language in Kalkatak

The last breaths of Kalasha language in Kalkatak

Fakhruddin Akhunzada

According to linguistic experts the 6000 languages in our world will be reduced to the half of that number by the middle of this century if language shifting continues at the same rate as now. The speakers of minority languages give up their mother-tongues for the language of the majority. In our country a number of languages are in this situation. The small language Kalasha in Chitral District has been reduced to only a few thousand because the speakers have started using Khowar, the lingua franca of Chitral. The Kalasha speakers of Kalkatak, a tiny village in southern Chitral, have shifted language three times during the last century. They gave up Kalasha, adopted Palula, and then abandoned Palula for Khowar. Nowadays the last remnants of the Kalasha language will soon have disappeared from the village. 

At the beginning of the last century, the language of Kalkatak was Kalasha, an Indo-Arya n language; and the language of an ancient tribe also called Kalasha, which today lives in three valleys in Chitral, Bumboret, Rumbur and Birir. There are only about a dozen elderly people living in Kalkatak who still know Kalasha, but these do not usually like to speak it. The Kalasha language will disappear from the village with the death of this handful of people.

Muhammad Wali Shah, an elderly man of 72, says “People, with whom I used to speak Kalasha in my childhood, do not like to speak it now”. He adds that until the 1960s, he could still find some company with whom to speak the language, but after that no one has been keen on toconversation in this language. 

Kalasha was still dominant in the village in the 1930s. No-one had yet shifted over to Palula or Khowar, and some non-Kalasha speakers had even learnt to speak it. Salah Khan, another elderly man, says “My father was a Khowar speaker who migrated to the village from Madak and married a Kalasha woman in the village. Kalasha was spoken in my home and I learned to speak it.”. 

Rahim Khan, a man in his 40s and a son of Kalasha parents, does not know Kalasha at all, but speaks Palula. He says “I learnt Kalasha from my parents along with Palula and Khowar in my childhood, but later on I forgot the language, since Palula was so dominating.” He speaks Palula with his children. 

The people of Kalkatak gave up Kalasha because they felt inferior, and because it was easy to adopt other languages. In the time of the Kator ruler , all Kalasha of the area were in the Rayat class -- the lowest class. The people of the upper classes were using ‘Kalash’ as a derogatory term for the people. The people were hesitant to speak the language in front of Khowar speakers. The difficulties increased further when a fort was constructed in the village in 1930 for the son of a Khowar-speaking ruler, and many Khowar speakers came to the village along with the prince. 

Wasim Khan, born in 1937, says “The people of Kalkatak gave up Kalasha because they felt inferior. Other tribes in the area considered the Kalasha inferior in status, and because of the Kalasha language this inferiority was more visible. The people of Kalkatak thought that people considered them inferior because they spoke Kalasha.”

The villagers already knew Palula and Khowar along with their mother tongue and they had no difficulty in adopting either of these languages. The interaction and intermarriage of the villagers with Palula speakers from the adjacent Biori Valley had already made them fluent in Palula. For a long time they were speaking these languages along with Kalasha. 

Khoshani, an old lady in the village, says: ”My parents were Kalasha speakers and my mother-tongue was Kalasha. I used to speak Kalasha as long as I was with my parents. I stopped doing that when I married and instead started to speak Palula. My mother-in-law was a Palula speaker from Biori and the language in my in-laws’ house was Palula.”

Muhammad Salim, an influential Kalasha man, migrated to Biori Valley with his family to protect himself from enforced labour under the mehtar. He stayed there for a long time and came back to the village with the Palula language. His children spoke Palula. The summer-pastures of the Kalkatak villagers also lie at the eastern end of the Biori Valley. The people of Kalkatak had to go through the valley with their goats in order to get there. The shepherds of both language communities had a lot of interaction with each other while in the pastures. 

The inhabitants of a small village called Serdur, near Kalkatak, are immigrants from Biori. They have been there for three generations. They still speak Palula, and depend on Kalkatak for many things. Until recently, they had no graveyard or mosque of their own, and they still came to Kalkatak for the Eid prayers. 

To the people of Kalkatak, ‘Kalasha’ was a term not only used for a language but also for a tribe who were considered inferior, and, perhaps more importantly, for a religion which was considered infidel. To them, speaking Kalasha meant being perceived as inferior and infidel. Although the people of Kalkatak had given up the Kalasha religion, they had kept the language.

Meanwhile, the Kalasha of Suwir – a village across the river to the west of Kalkatak – took an oath never again to speak Kalasha. The villagers collectively gave up the language. This must have had a great effect on the people of Kalkatak.

The Kalasha language is drawing its last breaths in the village of Kalkatak. The few remaining speakers of Kalasha in the village are in their seventies. With the death of these people the last symbol of the Kalasha tradition will disappear from the village forever.

Source: http://www.fli-online.org/documents/languages/kalasha/kalasha_in_kalkatak.htm

The Kalasha Language at Risk

The Kalasha Language at Risk

PESHAWAR: When Mohammad Sat Sayeed died in Kalkatak Village in southern Chitral a few years back, an entire dialect died with him. The last words uttered by the native Kalasha language speaker were Sayeed’s familiar loud prayer, “O mi ganah xaudai mi nauf keri,” or, “Oh my God forgive me.”In his 2009 book “Kalkatak: A Crossroad of Cultures in Chitral”, Fakhruddin Akhundzada notes that the Kalasha language is nearly extinct in nearby villages except for a few elderly people who are hesitant to speak it in front of outsiders. The language traces its roots to the historical Kafiristan, now Nuristan Province in Afghanistan, and was stigmatised as a ‘non-Muslim language’ by some.
This illustrates the threat faced by the rare languages of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), where 26 of 69 Pakistani languages are spoken.
These native language communities are small, and scattered across inhospitable terrain and are facing threats from globalisation and language hegemony.
These small languages are ignored in the national language discourse. The insurgency in the region further dealt a blow to these languages, as the only institution conducting research on the subject, Forum for Language Initiatives (FLI), shifted its offices from Peshawar to Islamabad due to security reasons a few years back.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Interactive Atlas of World’s Languages in Danger 2009 says that the languages face extinction due to the monopoly of major languages and lack of documentation and preservation on the part of the concerned authorities.
The UNESO Atlas classifies at least 27 Pakistani languages as endangered and 18 out of these are native to K-P, Fata and G-B.
UNESO classifies severely endangered languages as, “Spoken by grandparents and older generations, while the parent generation may understand it but doesn’t speak it with children or among themselves.”
These endangered languages are no longer learnt by children as a mother tongue at home, while vulnerable languages, though spoken by most children, are often restricted to the home.
FLI, an initiative to promote and preserve indigenous languages, lists 26 languages spoken across K-P and northern Pakistan.
Chitral District, with a population of around 500,000, hosts 12 of these languages. Renowned Norwegian linguist George Morgenstierne noted that the Chitral was one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world.
Mohammad Pervesh Shaheen, a linguist based in Swat said, “Languages are the limbs of humanity and when a language goes extinct, a nation’s culture, history, folklore, civilization and knowledge go with it.”
“There is a Hadith in which the Prophet Mohammad (SAW) says, ‘If you want to save yourself from the mischief of a nation, learn its language,’ and we are forgetting our own,” he added.
Last year, the K-P assembly passed a bill allowing primary education to be imparted using any of eight languages native to the province. Hopefully, this and other similar measures can lead to the promotion of endangered dialects and save these languages from the Sword of Damocles hanging over them.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 21st, 2011.

(Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/121483/international-mother-tongue-day-18-languages-spoken-in-k-p-fata-and-g-b-at-risk/)

The Indo-Aryan Languages (Book)

The Indo-Aryan Languages
By George Cardona, Dhanesh Jain

The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by at least 700 million people throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. With texts in Old Indo-Aryan, Middle Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan, this language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European.
This volume is divided into two main sections dealing with general matters and individual languages. Each chapter on the individual language covers the phonology and grammar (morphology and syntax) of the language and its writing system, and gives the historical background and information concerning the geography of the language and the number of its speakers.

Chapter twenty two (pp 905-990) is related to Dardic languages and the Kalasha language is fall in Dard group of the languages. This chapter is written by Elena Bashir.

An e-book on the Kalasha Language (and other languages of Chitral)

Languages of Chitral (Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan Volume 5 )