Vanishing voices of the mountains: The struggle to preserve Pahari languages

Indian Express

08-05-2025

'Kos kos par badle paani, chaar kos par vaani.
(The water changes every mile, the speech every fourth.)'
— Traditional north Indian proverb
Nowhere is the adage more evident than in the Pahari-speaking regions of the Western Himalayas, where steep ridges, secluded valleys, and towering coniferous forests have, over centuries, enforced cultural and linguistic seclusion, isolating communities and nurturing a diversity of not just languages, but also their many variants.
While these languages and dialects, even those in geographic proximity, phonetically differ from each other due to the hardy terrain, linguists have traditionally lumped these vernaculars under the catch-all 'Pahari'. Derived from pahar, meaning 'mountain', Pahari refers not to a single language, but to a wide array of tongues spoken across the Himalayan belt.
Sir George Abraham Grierson, who conducted The Linguistic Survey of India between 1901 and 1928, identified the Pahari languages as a distinct subgroup within the Indo-Aryan family. In Volume IX, Part IV of the Survey, Grierson classified Pahari into three principal divisions: Eastern, Central, and Western, corresponding roughly to the modern Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu & Kashmir, and parts of Nepal and Pakistan.
Western Pahari, spoken primarily in Himachal Pradesh and parts of Jammu, includes languages such as Kangri, Mandeali, Chambeali, Gaddi, and Bhalesi. Central Pahari covers Garhwali and Kumaoni, the principal languages of Uttarakhand. Eastern Pahari is represented almost entirely by Nepali, once known as Khas Kura or Gorkhali. While these tongues differ in grammar and vocabulary, they are united by their mountain origins and the cultural traditions they carry: folk tales, devotional songs, and seasonal idioms.
The Pahari languages reveal deep linguistic kinships with neighbouring tongues such as Punjabi, Hindko, and Gojri, suggesting a history of migration from the plains to the peaks, along with interactions with diverse groups such as the Kolis, Dogras, Gujjars, Gurungs, and Tamangs, and Pahari Pathans and Dards in modern-day Pakistan.
'It is a remarkable fact that, although Pahari has little connection with the Panjabi, Western and Eastern Hindi, and Bihari spoken immediately to its south, it shows manifold traces of intimate relationship with the languages of Rajputana,' wrote Grierson in The Linguistic Survey of India.
The Linguistic Survey of India – Himachal Pradesh, carried out between 1995 and 2008 by the Office of the Registrar General, documents five major languages and 12 mother tongues, most of which belong to the Western Pahari group — locally referred to as Pahari or Himachali. Despite being spoken by nearly 90% of the state's population, according to a 1996 survey, these languages remain unrecognised in India's official language policies.
Pahari dialects such as Kangri, Mandeali, Chambeali, and Sirmauri are often recorded as 'Hindi' due to a lack of formal recognition. Moreover, there isn't a single college in Himachal dedicated to the study or preservation of Pahari.
According to the Census of 2011, Himachal Pradesh has a population of 6.86 million. However, only 18.1% of the population is recorded as bilingual, suggesting that the shift to Hindi has come at the expense of local dialects. The LSI identifies Bharmauri (Gaddi), Churahi, Chambeali, Kangri, Keonthali, Kulvi, Mandeali, Pangwali, Sanori, and Sirmauri as mother tongues under the Hindi group, while Bhateali and Bilaspuri fall under Punjabi, with Dogri, Nepali, Kinnauri, Lahauli, and Bhotia included as distinct.
Take Kangri, for instance, often called Pahari by locals. Spoken by over 1.1 million people, primarily in Kangra district, it is linguistically closer to Punjabi than Hindi. Despite its large speaker base, Kangri is classified under Hindi in the 2011 Census. The same goes for Mandeali, spoken by over 621,000 people, mostly in Mandi district, and Chambeali, with around 124,000 speakers in Chamba district.
Studies have found that in most households, younger generations are drifting toward Hindi or English, using Pahari dialects only at home or during cultural events. In schools, the local dialect is nearly invisible.
Churahi and Bharmauri, spoken in Chamba district, show a similar pattern. Churahi has about 75,000 speakers, with 99% of them in Chamba. Bharmauri (also known as Gaddi) is spoken by roughly 153,000 people, but again, usage is mostly domestic. Hindi dominates official interaction, education, and digital communication. Pangwali, another local tongue, is classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. It is spoken by only 18,640 people in the remote Pangi region. Outside the region, the language is almost nonexistent.
Keonthali and Sanori are even more vulnerable. Keonthali, found around Shimla, had around 45,000 speakers in the 1961 Census. By 2011, that number had plummeted to fewer than 10,000. Sanori, spoken in Mandi, has nearly disappeared from public use, replaced almost entirely by Hindi. Bilaspuri (also known as Kahluri), spoken by nearly 296,000 people in Bilaspur, remains confined to household use. Sirmauri, with about 107,000 speakers in Sirmaur district, still holds some cultural space thanks to a vibrant oral literature tradition, but even that is waning. Like most other Pahari languages, it has shifted from the Tankri script to Devanagari.
Tibeto-Burman languages show a slightly different trend. Kinnauri, spoken by about 82,000 people in Kinnaur district, and Lahauli, with roughly 89,500 speakers mainly in Lahaul and Kullu, retain stronger community roots. Their geographic isolation has helped preserve them, but the adoption of Hindi and English in schools and jobs is growing. Bhotia, spoken by just over 2,000 people across Lahaul, Kullu, and Kinnaur, is already at the edge of linguistic survival. Meanwhile, Nepali, a language of migration, has nearly 90,000 speakers in the state, particularly in Shimla, Solan, and Kullu.
Javed Rahi, a tribal researcher and expert in Gojri languages, says, 'The Pahari dialect is spoken in Jammu and Kashmir in areas adjoining Himachal. The dialects spoken include Kagani, Chabeli, Mirpur, Pathwari, Punchi, and Hindko. These are completely distinct from Dogri, Ladakhi, and Kashmiri. However, these dialects are at risk as they are not studied individually or considered separate languages.'
The Tankri (or Takri) script, once widely used to write Kangri, Chambeali, Mandeali, and Gaddi, has virtually disappeared. Evolving from the Sharada script around the 10th century, Tankri was used across northwestern India for administrative and cultural purposes. However, with the rise of Hindi and Devanagari, especially post-Independence, Tankri lost its status. Today, there are efforts to revive the script. In 2021, a PIL filed in the Himachal Pradesh High Court demanded that Pahari be recognised as an official language and that Tankri be adopted as a unified script.
However, Tulsi Raman, former secretary, languages, art and culture, Himachal Pradesh, who has penned the book, Lahul, Himachal Ka Antarlok, says, 'An initiative was taken to make Himachali Pahari, with all its dialect variations a proper language, but it turned out to be an impossible task given the diversity of the dialects.
'The dialects, especially those of upper and lower Himachal, are so different that during kavi sammelans, people from different areas of the state could not understand each other well. This also extended to literature, and now most people simply write in Hindi,' he said.
Despite community efforts, elder speakers often lament that their children can understand the language but do not speak it. The next generation, growing up with smartphones and English-medium education, often cannot understand it at all. The story of Sheila Devi, 85, from Shimla, is a familiar one. Originally from Garhwal, she taught her children Garhwali when they were young. Today, they understand but don't speak it. Her grandchildren, scattered across Indian metros and abroad, speak English and Hindi, but not a word of Garhwali.
'One notices that people of Bengal and Punjab speak their language outside their state as well. However, Pahadi is rarely spoken outside one's village, which is one reason that modernisation of everything from clothes to languages has affected Pahari,' says Dr Prem Sharma, retired secretary, Himachal Academy of Arts, Culture, and Languages.
According to researchers Muhammad Gulfraz Abbasi, Zafar Iqbal Khattak, Sayyam Bin Saeed (WCES-2011), psycho-sociological pressures within families and schools are central to the decline of the Pahari language in northern Punjab and Kashmir. Their findings reveal that middle- and upper-income families increasingly associate the use of indigenous languages with backwardness, discouraging their children from speaking Pahari even at home. Children who use their mother tongues are often corrected or even shamed. The result is a linguistic shift that sees children abandoning ancestral languages by the second or third generation.
Linguist Narayan Chand Parashar, a scholar and former MP, was tasked with standardising the dialects and seeking Eighth Schedule status under the Constitution. He helped resist what many saw as Dogri linguistic dominance, particularly after Dogri gained Sahitya Akademi recognition in 1969 and was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 2003.
Despite decades of advocacy, the Pahari languages have yet to gain recognition under the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, a list that includes officially acknowledged languages. Inclusion would grant Pahari dialects benefits such as use in education, administration, and eligibility for representation in literary bodies like the Sahitya Akademi.
However, not everyone is in favour of Pahari being added to the 8th Schedule. Dr Devendra Gupta, former director, languages, art and culture at Himachal Academy, says, 'While I do not oppose regional languages… if Pahari and other Hindi dialects are included in the 8th Schedule, Hindi will cease to exist. It will become a minority language, one which we will not be able to claim as an international language in the UN.'
One of the most politically charged developments came in March 2024, when the Centre granted Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the million-strong Pahari-speaking community in Jammu and Kashmir, despite strong objections from the Gujjar-Bakerwal community. Historically, the main beneficiaries of the region's 10% ST reservation, the Gujjar-Bakerwals, saw this inclusion as a dilution of their hard-won rights. To manage this tension, the Union Territory administration increased the ST quota by an additional 10%, now shared among Paharis and three other newly included groups, while preserving the Gujjar-Bakerwal share.
Rahi says, 'While Grierson provided a linguistic classification of Pahari, a parallel understanding emerged in Jammu and Kashmir, one rooted in ethnic self-identification, which eventually shaped a distinct Pahari identity in the region.'
Caught between the push for constitutional recognition and fears of linguistic fragmentation, the Pahari languages now sit at the heart of a larger national conversation about identity and inclusion.
Bibliography
Moseley, C. (Ed.). (2007). Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages. Routledge.
Ray, D. C., & Chowdhury, S. R. (Eds.). (2023). Darjeeling: In search of people's history of the hills. Manohar.
Rizwan, R. (2020). Kashmiri life narratives: Human rights, pleasure, and the local cosmopolitan. Routledge.
Grierson, G. A. (Ed.). (1916). Linguistic survey of India, vol. IX, Indo-Aryan family, central group, part IV, specimens of the Pahari languages and Gujurj. Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
Abbasi, M. G., Khattak, Z. I., & Saeed, S. B. (2011). Psycho-sociological processes undermining Pahari teaching in schools and homes in Pakistan.
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More