Army must consider mother tongue under 'sadbhavana': Professor

New Delhi, June 10 (UNI) Emphasising that the ''forceful imposition'' of any language on the people other than the mother tongue can become ''detrimental to harmony'', an IIT professor has urged the Army to give ''utmost priority'' to the native language under its operation 'sadbhavana' in Jammu and Kashmir.

''The Army's move to start Urdu medium schools in Kargil in the name of promoting literacy is obviously at the instance of the Jammu and Kashmir government while the Centre is oblivious to the facts,'' Dr Kunal Ghosh, a professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department in IIT Kanpur, claimed in his article published in Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece.

The Shiekh Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir had ''mischievously'' carved out Muslim-dominated Kargil district by including Buddhist majority area of Zanskar in the Ladakh region.

''And the result was, there was no district by the name of Ladakh,'' he said in the article.

When the people of Ladakh were threatened by the replacement of their mother tongue, the Students' Educational Cultural Movement of Ladakh in 1988 raised concerns against it following which the J&K Assembly passed a Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, allowing 'Bodhi', the common script of people of Ladakh and Baltistan in PoK, in Zanskar.

He cautioned the Army against banishing Ladhaki language in Ladakh on the same lines of Pakistan's policy to vanish Balti language in Baltistan in the Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.

''Ladhakis in Jammu and Kashmir and Baltis of PoK have 'Bodhi' script of Tibetan origin. The relationship between the two languages is like 'Devanagari' and Hindi. Pakistan was imposing Urdu on Balti people to promote tourism in Baltistan and marketing it as 'little Tibet'.

To substantiate his argument, the professor presented a list of words, sentences and verbs of Balti and Ladhaki languages to show how indistinguishable the two languages are.

UNI