Indus Kohistani speakers to strengthen literacy in their language

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.