Literary people resolve to work together for GB languages

The culture and language admirers of Gilgit Baltistan (GB) got together for a policy dialogue in Gilgit city last week. More than two dozen people including writers, authors, and poets of five major indigenous language communities as well as people from relevant government bodies, civil society, media and academia participated in the discussion and pledged to reach a consensus on what was needed to be done for protecting and promoting of the languages spoken in the region. Shina, Balti, Khowar, Burushaski and Wakhi languages were represented in the event by their writers and researchers while the departments of education and tourism by their officials. The items of Culture in GB are still handled by the tourism department. Three media workers also became part of the event who highlighted the event’s significance in their dailies the other day. The event also became a story on the social media igniting debate on language preservation thanks to the vloggers who developed short video clips of the session and uploaded to social media platforms, spreading the word that how languages of GB are to be taken up. The civil society members also joined hands with the language lovers in the event and expressed their support to them so that the intangible cultural assets of the region could be preserved and promoted.

The participants agreed to work jointly, especially for resolving the issues mostly that are related to individuals surfacing at community level. They pledged to come together for broader consultation with other communities and also formed a committee for coordination of inter-communities consultation and interaction. The government officials who were present on the occasion, encouraged the community researchers and writers to jointly work for their languages so that the process of consensus building and agreement over the language related initiatives would be completed which will result in making the practice easy for institutions to work on cultures and languages. The participants thanked FLI for organizing the joint event for major stakeholders in the region, and hoped that the activity would impact the language development trend in a positive way and the effect the policy making process in a helpful manner.