1. Home
2. Jammu Kashmir

GCC presents memorandum to LG on shut schools, official 5-language formula

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 9/23/2020 10:51:44 AM

SRINAGAR, Sep 22: The Group of Concerned Citizens, comprising former vice-chancellors, professors, pedagogues and other academicians, businessmen, retired senior bureaucrats, educational administrators, lawyers, scientists, media persons and retired judges presented a memorandum to the Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha while raising their concern over education sector, the five language formula and the
The GCC memorandum expresses its deep anguish over the continuous closure of educational institutions, particularly schools since July 13, 2019 for over one year now. The GCC said, “The closure of educational institutions for 381 days out of 390 days since then has resulted in a serious learning crisis. The extended school closure has badly impacted the physical, emotional and psychological health of children as well.”
With respect to Urdu script, the memorandum also said that “given the cultural and emotional sensibilities associated with Kashmiri and its viable and time tested standard Persian script written the Group entreats you to kindly urge the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) to take up with Unicode consortium and relevant authority the matter of preparation of the afore-mentioned data and its subsequent validation in Persian script for its inclusion in CLDR, instead of Devnagri script.” “Many other languages like Gojri, Pahari, Poshtu, Balti, Sheena and Urdu are also written in Persian script. As a matter of fact, the common Persian script used in these languages facilitates promotion of multilingualism. The preparation of data for Kashmiri in its Persian script will make it easy to prepare similar data in the above mentioned languages as and when such action is required to be taken,” it further added.
“The Group notes with caution the approval of the Bill by the Cabinet to include Kashmiri, Dogri and Hindi as official languages of Jammu and Kashmir, for introduction in Parliament. With the passage of the Bill by Parliament Jammu and Kashmir will have five official languages, viz Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Dogri and English instead of two languages at present. The Group strongly feels that the move aimed at assuaging diverse denominations is impracticable. The Group wonders how a 5 language policy is going to work on the ground. Shall official correspondence and records and data have to be in five languages, with necessary translations, and how far is it practicable?” the memorandum said.
It further pointed out that “apart from creating confusion, this move may lead to divisive linguistic politics as competing demands for inclusion of other languages like: Gojri, Pahari and Punjabi have already started cropping up. Even in the case of Kashmiri and Dogri questions are being raised as to which dialect/s of these languages will be adopted.”
Copies of this communication have been sent to Home Minister, Minster of Education and Minster of Information technology Govt of India, besides all MPs of Jammu and Kashmir state and many others whom GCC, said Dr. RafeeqMasoodi secretary of the group while soliciting the people's support for its “just cause”.