The Last Words of a Culture

Kishtwari, Bhaderwahi, Sarazi—these mother tongues once filled the homes of Jammu and Kashmir. Today, they’re slipping away, silenced by stigma and shame.

- Ayaan Saroori

In a sleepy village tucked deep in the Chenab Valley, 64-year-old Naseem Begum used to sing lullabies in Sarazi to put her grandchildren to sleep. She still hums the tunes, but these days, the children don’t know the words.

“I ask them to repeat after me,” she said, her voice trailing off. “They giggle and switch to Hindi.”

It’s not just a family shift. It's a slow, steady unraveling of a region's cultural fabric.

In Jammu and Kashmir, mother tongues like Sarazi, Bhaderwahi, and Kishtwari are vanishing from daily life. What used to be spoken freely in markets, kitchens, and schoolyards is now slipping into silence.

At the center of this crisis is a difficult question: What happens to a people when they stop speaking the language of their ancestors?

Across India, the loss of native languages has triggered growing concern. But in the hilly terrains and towns of Jammu and Kashmir, the decline feels sharper.

The state's official languages—Urdu, Kashmiri, Dogri—still hold some ground. But the lesser-known dialects? They're hanging on by threads.

Burhan Ahmed Mir, a young teacher from Kishtwar, has been sounding the alarm for years. He runs a local reading group and says they struggle to find printed material in Kishtwari.