Kashmiri language and the Script Conflict

- Uma Kant Kachru

My five-year-old granddaughter was with her Hindi vernacular book opened on a page which had one word on each page with pictures. The words were शलगम and षट्कोण. What struck me was the way she was deciphering the words. She just spoke the alphabets and the words came out. It just set me thinking; if this was written in Arabic or Roman scripts, would this child be able to read the words? In Arabic, the first word would be spelt and read as “Sheen, Laam, Gaaf, Meem” and in Roman, “Ess, Ech, Aey, El, Jee, Aey, Em”. In neither would the self-learning child be able to read the correct word. This is because these scripts are non-phonetic. Devnagri alphabet is purely phonetic. This took me to the last few weeks’ video conference discussions on the social media on alternate/ co-script for Kashmiri since Government of India has, so far, not granted recognition to the requested Devnagri as the alternate official script for it. While this is a welcome move and all the active organisations/ groups who have taken this initiative, deserve congratulatory accolades, it is ironical that an unsuited, Nastaliq script has the official recognition while the one which is scientifically better suited, is lamenting to be recognised and is ignored. This tells volumes about how professional is our official system of linguistics in the country.

However, these video conference discussions precipitated four issues that form the basis of this article:

1.     Is there a need for seeking recognition for an alternate script?

2.     Conflicting views on Devnagri or Sharada to be the alternate script.

3.     Which is scientifically better suited for adapting to Kashmiri phonetics?

4.     What should be the approach methodology?

I will deal with each one separately.

Is there a need for seeking recognition for an alternate script?

To me, this is a non-issue. Instead, I would first ask myself, “Why do I need an alternate script?” And the answer is very clear; because majority of the Kashmiri Pandit diaspora doesn’t know how to read or write in the recognised script, which is Nastalik. In order to keep our language alive amongst the Kashmiri diaspora, we need to provide a script for our writers, poets and creative artists through which they can reach their creative works to their audience. This is the basic need. And, if we have consensus on this, who stops us from using the chosen medium. The critical question then is, which script? I will deal with this in a while. The focus here is that we must provide the medium for communication, irrespective of it not having government recognition. If my diaspora across the globe standardises on a script and adopts it for writing Kashmiri, in the next one decade we will make loads of literature of varied kind available to our community that will motivate and facilitate them to communicate in Kashmiri. It is also a great opportunity for transliteration of the rich Kashmiri work available in Nastaliq that can be made accessible to the diaspora. When we have large amount of literature available in the alternate script, we will have a strong footing and reason to present our case and seek recognition for it. Let us also remember that recognition has only a cosmetic value for the script, particularly in the digital world of today, except for publishing the works by the Sahitya Academy.

Conflicting views on Devnagri or Sharada to be alternate script:

If we believe that there is need for an alternate script, the next natural question is which script? To me, any Indian script is good enough for Kashmiri with modifications to accommodate the nuances of Kashmiri phonetics. To support my argument, I will take you to the basics of the majority of the Indian scripts. The basic alphabet of all the major Indian scripts is the same, with different symbolic representations. The “स्वर” (vowels) start with अ and end with अः. Similarly, “व्यंजन” (consonants) start with क and end with श्र. The symbols make them different for different languages. This basic concept will help us understand that Devnagri or Sharada is not the issue. The issue is which is easier in adaptation. The good news is that both the scripts have their respective UNICODE, thus making them equally digitally enabled. However, if we look at the demography of our diaspora, more than 95% are familiar with Devnagri, mainly because of Hindi being the common connecting language which uses Devnagri script. It, therefore, becomes an easier choice because the readership community will only need to learn phonetic variations through modified signs (मात्राएं). On the other hand, Sharada, by dint of its remaining dormant for centuries, the majority diaspora is not familiar with it. Besides, historically, Sharada has been predominantly a script for scholarship in Sanskrit. All the works and manuscripts in this script are in Sanskrit language, including the scriptures. Though we find Grierson mentioning in his “Preliminary Note” of his famous – A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language, “Kashmiris use three alphabets for writing their language. Hindus as a rule employ either the Sharada or the Nagari character and Musalmans the Persian”, we haven’t found any authentic original Kashmiri work available in Sharada. This also lends support to the theory of Kashmiri having been largely a dialect till Nastaliq was adopted as its script. Adopting this, Sharada will involve mass training which is a long and tedious effort before it becomes the popular first choice for the people. Sharada, though is extremely important to be revived through training and learning as there is a lot of rich material in published and manuscript forms in libraries spread across the globe that need to be retrieved and made readable. For this we don’t only need students knowing Sharada but also knowing Sanskrit language.

We have a young group – The Core Sharda Team (CST) which started a campaign a few years ago to train students desirous of learning the Sharada script. This team deserves accolades for the way they have adopted a simple but effective method of training people using the social media – WhatsApp. Today they have enabled a respectable brigade of over 2000 people who can read and write in this script and these numbers are continuously increasing. What is, though, a challenge still is that not all are Sanskrit enabled. However, the good news is that CST has a group of 140 PhD Sanskrit scholars already working with them on the manuscripts. This drive of training people to learn both, Sanskrit and Sharada script, has to be cultivated within the diaspora, which may need a different approach. This team has also developed a mobile app that facilitates writing in Sharada on the mobile phones. They also have lately adopted new मात्रा to make it fully Kashmiri phonetic ready. I believe they have updated the app with these phonetic updates and made available to general masses to popularise it among those who are interested in using it with some basic training. This drive needs support from the community for revival of this script which is thought to be older than Devnagri.

With Devnagri, we have a different challenge. Although it has evolved as a reasonably ready script, there is no standard version adopted by the writers. Each one uses her/ his own method of playing with signs (मात्रा) for phonetic representations of typical Kashmiri words, making it hard for the reader to decipher. This seems to be a historical problem with us. Even, for building the Kashmiri dictionary, Grierson had to face the problem of different flavours floating, of which he has made exemplified mention in the preliminary note. This problem persists till date with multiple standards in use. Incidentally, this also makes our case weaker when presenting to the Government authorities, since we don’t have a standard Alphabet. This has happened because, yet again we have adopted unstructured and individualistic approach in silos when trying to adopt signs for phonetic nuances. It may be pertinent to mention that an effort in making Devnagri as its alternate script was made more than a century ago in 1914 when the first primer for it was written by the famous Sanskrit scholar, Pt. Nityanand Shastri. What is notable is that this primer was published two years before the famous Indologist, G A Grierson brought out the first ever edition of Kashmiri dictionary in 1916 which, interestingly is also predominantly using Devnagri script for phonetic representation. However, what is also sad is that this primer remained only in private possession and came to light only a decade or so ago. Despite making it known, we yet again repeated the mistake by ignoring it and preferred to redesign the wheel individually, resulting in multiple versions sans standardisation. However, let bygones be bygones. These experiences give us new learnings. The first step, therefore, is to bring all the versions to converge into one standard script. Each version has meant a lot of individual effort and we must not ignore that. We need to invite all the creators, scholars, writers, poets on a common platform and bring consensus on a standard version. Then this standard version will need to be computer enabled. This will not be a challenge because, Kashmiri script writing software – Akruti Kashmiri Arinimal Engine is already available, thanks to Dr Roop Krishen Bhat (former Director at Ministry of HRD, Deptt. of Higher Education, Govt of India) and his team who undertook the development of the engine which is usable with the normal computer keyboard. Dr Bhat and his team deserve accolades for making this brilliant software available. However, it is not much known or easily available for use by masses. This must be made free downloadable so that more and more people use it for writing their stuff. There is already an Android version of Devnagri keyboard available on Android phones which has all the signs that Akruti is using for Kashmiri.

Which is scientifically better suited for adapting to Kashmiri phonetics?

Much of this is already explained above. Any Indian script is scientifically equal with modifications to include new signs. If Arabic script, which doesn’t have signs to represent the phonetics of Kashmiri language, could be modified by the Kashmiri scholars to create Nastaliq, Sharada and Devnagri scripts have many of the signs (मात्रा) suitable for easy adoption. Akruti and Matrika have done it very effectively in the respective scripts in Devnagri and Sharada by introducing additional appropriate signs (मात्रा) to make them fully suitable to write Kashmiri. Thus, the issue with Sharada is not in the science of its script but practicality of its adoption as addressed above. Since CST has already created the Kashmiri version of the script, which is a big leap forward, it is as suitable to be used as Devnagri. It is a collective responsibility of both the teams with the initiatives in Devnagri and Sharada, to see that Sharada script revives to its full glory.

Approach methodology:

1.     Devnagri Script:

a.     Standardise on one Devnagri script by consensus with writers and scholars.

b.     Reach out to the intellectual community to adopt the standard script.

c.     Adopt the standard in Akruti.

d.     Adopt a publicity strategy to make the script available to the global community.

e.     Make Akruti freely available to all.

2.     Sharada Script:

a.     CST continues its drive of training.

b.     Prepare a publicity campaign for mass reach of the concept of Sharada learning.

c.     Create a Sanskrit literate Sharada core group in the team to work on scriptures and manuscripts in different libraries.

d.     Create a time bound program for converting them into Devnagri.

e.     Make the converted work available to masses.

f.      Make publicity campaign to reach the new Kashmiri version of the App to the diaspora with awareness campaign and encourage them to learn and write Kashmiri in Sharada.

3.     Recognition for alternate/ co-script:

a.     Bring all active groups, scholars, writers under one platform.

b.     Let there be one official representative organisation.

c.     Adopt and agree upon the common standard script.

d.     Create database of available literature written in the alternate script.

e.     Represent the case for recognition to HRD Ministry with data through the official organisation only.

f.      Approach influencing Government organisations/ ministers/ officials at different levels to push the case.