The Indus Kohistani (IK) language in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa finds four more activists from the community who are zealous to strengthen its literacy segment. The young activists, who attended FLI’s ‘Planning for the Future of my Language’ program developed plan to maximize the use of their language for reading and writing. This program was organized in Bisham town of Shangla district. The participants developed strategy to enhance writing and reading in their language by motivating young people on using social media. They created chatting groups, discussion pages, sent invitations and started developing contents in their language. They also pledged to try to collect cultural items for the purpose of book publishing.

The Indus Kohistani language is spoken in Jijal, Pattan, Seo, Duber-Kandia valleys and other villages of Kohistan region. About half a million people speak this language as their mother tongue. The community activists and researchers are striving hard to develop reading material in the language. The young generation of the community has started using their language for communication on social media. A group of IK speakers are running a multilingual educational program in the area, providing the language with minimum academic material.

FLI has been supporting all initiatives the IK community took to strengthen the language. We are utilizing available resources to include the language in KP schools’ curriculum like other four languages of the province. We are working with IK community researchers side by side, especially to enhance writing and reading in IK. FLI has recently published two books in the Indus Kohistani language to contribute to strengthening the language.

Authored by its trainees, FLI published three new books in Shina, Palula and Indus Kohistani languages. The book in Shina language is a set of folktales and folksongs of Shina language collected and produced by FLI’s trainee, Amir Haider. While the books in Palula and Indus Kohistani were authored by Naseem Haider and Gul Muhammad respectively. Both of these conversation books are aimed at expanding the introduction of their languages to non-speakers by providing routine conversation in the target languages with translation in Urdu and English.

The book in Shina language was the first FLI got the opportunity to publish in the language. Shina, the largest language in the Dardic group is spoken by over two million people. Shina is a very vital language with a strong heritage of oral literature, including folktales, legends history, poetry and song. There is increasing interest in reading and writing Shina and preserving their oral heritage in print.

Palula is related to Shina, and is widely used and understood in communities living between Lowari and the small town Drosh of southern Chitral. A written form of the language has been developed and is being used in a small but growing body of local literature and educational materials.  The community has a rich heritage in the form of oral history, traditions and sayings.

Indus Kohistani is the major language of the west bank of the Indus River, spoken in villages like Jijal, Pattan, Seo, Kandia etc. More than 300,000 people speak this language. Literature in the language is being developed by educated community members and oral traditions are being printed. Like Palula this community has also arranged a preschool educational program beginning the education in children’s mother tongue, Indus Kohistani.

FLI has been supporting literature development in local languages to strengthen literacy in the languages, and recent books in the languages are hoped to serve the purpose. The organization makes arrangements for printing of books which are produced by its trainees to encourage the research and enhance the literature development work in the languages of northern Pakistan. Hereby, FLI felicitates all its three trainees over their new publications and assures them of continue support in the future.

Yadgha speakers of Lotkuh valley in Chitral arranged a poetry program on Phatak day in Garamchashma town of Lotkuh valley. A group of Khowar poets from Upper and Lower Chitral districts joined them in the historic event which was held for the promotion of Yadgha language and encouragement of Yadgha poets. The event provided first ever opportunity to Yadgha poets to come up with their creations, and introduced the participants to new poets from Yadgha language. Earlier, the poets from Yadgha community used to present their poems in Khowar who have recently switched to their native language due to increasing awareness regarding the importance of using mother tongue in the area by Yadgha language researchers and activists. Seven poets of Yadgha language presented their work in their language and got appreciation from the audience. Later on, the Yadgha songs were also part of the music program arranged after the poetry session. The session was organized by Yadgha Development Network, a partner of FLI in the community.

Phatak, a religious festival is celebrated on February 01, each year by Yadgha speakers in the valley. People in Chitral and Gilgit Baltistan usually celebrate Phatak on March 21 every year, as first day of Persian Solar Hijri calendar but people of Lotkuh valley also celebrate Phatak on 1st February to commemorate the work of Pir Nasir Khisro, the eleven century saint who, the local people believe came to this region in mid 11th century for preaching Ismaili sect of Islam. They cook traditional food (Shenek) and take to the Pir’s abbacy situated near Garamchashma town, to hand over the food to protectors of the place. The management of abbacy (Khanqah) then distributes the sacred food among followers of Pir and reads out his sayings to them. The elders of the community, on the occasion congratulate each other and offer prayers for wealth and health of the community. Young people on the day, after leaving the place go to their playgrounds for entertainment and women visit each other’s houses. This year, they added another activity of holding Yadgha poetry at the end of the day which was supported by FLI. More than 50 people from Yadgha language community were present to enjoy the first every poetry session, held in their mother tongue.

The Yadgha language, also called Lutkuhiwar or Yudga is spoken in the Lutkoh Valley, about 46 km west of Chitral. This valley is connected with Zibak, Afghanistan, through the Daruh pass that is at about 1480 meters above sea level.  There are an estimated 6,150 Yidgha speakers, who are the minority in a majority Khowar-speaking region. 

FLI held a three day workshop for strengthening of writing system in Gawarbati language in Arandu village, situated  alongside Afghan border in southern Chitral this week. In total 12 people, including government school teachers, language researchers and activists attended the sessions held under FLI’s Orthography and Writers’ Workshop series. This event was designed by FLI to support community based partner organizations working for development and promotion of their respective languages. The idea of this event came up from the community as for this particular event, FLI let its partners to devise plans for their language based on need they felt and share with FLI for financial and technical support. The event was facilitated by FLI’s external facilitators.

Gawarbati (gwt), a Dardic language is spoken in southern part of Chitral valley. FLI’s first intervention of language documentation for this language took place in 2016 in which a writing system was placed and also some researchers from the community were trained in basic language documentation. Alongside, some initial publications were brought out in the language and ten folktales were recorded with Urdu translation. Since then, this indigenous language is being worked on by those who got trained by FLI.

This was among three events FLI designed for its partners in northern Pakistan, under which the partners were allowed to come up with their own proposals. Earlier, an event in Palula, also spoken in Chitral was supported by FLI and second in Indus Kohistan.

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FLI provided books to the Children libraries of its partners CBOs. In first phase Palula Community Welfare Organization (PCWO), Gawri Community Development Program (GCDP) and Idara Baraye Taleem o Taraqi (IBT) were provided with the books for their MLE schools. It is worthy to mention that FLI’s target ethonoliguistic communities lack access to reading materials. FLI is striving hard to fill the gap by developing reading resources in the mother tongue of Children and purchasing L2 books from Market