Sharda or Nastaliq? Protests After MHRD Drops Tweet Featuring “Islamised” Kashmiri Facing Censure From Pandits

Under HRD Ministry’s Bhasha Sangam campaign - celebrating India’s linguistic diversity, it posts regular tweets featuring Indian languages to teach people how simple phrases are spoken in the said language.

It also carried an explainer of both native and roman scripts for further information. Here’s an example of a tweet for Hindi.

While it appeared as an innocuous exercise, the Ministry on 2 December decided to feature the Kashmiri language which it described as a “lyrical language emanating from one of the most beautiful places on earth”.

Here is the info-graphic it carried for the language.

Soon various twitter users noted that Sharada was not depicted as the native Kashmiri script and “Hello” in the language was translated as Asalamu Alikum. Prominent Kashmiri Pandits as a result decided to protest, where-in they further claimed that the translation for “What is your name?” was also wrong.

After the protest took traction, the HRD Ministry decided to pay heed and deleted its tweet. It also later posted an apology in which it called itself sensitive to the comments raised.

Subsequently journalist Aditya Raj Kaul posted an edited picture of the Kashimiri info-graphic which included the Sharada script and the translation deemed correct by the Pandits.

This episode though hasn’t gone down well with the Kashmiri political brass which decided to condemn the HRD Ministry. As reported by a local Kashmiri daily, prominent politician Engineer Rasheed alleged that New Delhi doesn’t understand the sentiments of Kashmiri people.

He termed this protest by the Pandits as “deplorable”, “condemnable” and advised them to promote “their” mother language.

Rasheed has since found a supporter in form of J&K People Democratic Front chairman Hakeem Yaseen who called the protesting Pandits “communal minded” and stated that the Ministry should not have acted on their presumptions.

Despite the protests and the Ministry’s apology, the website’s portal still carries the older version of the Kashmiri language.