Consider mother tongue under 'sadbhavana'

New Delhi, June 10: 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 thename of promoting literacy is obviously at the instance of the Jammuand Kashmir government while the Centre is oblivious to the facts,'' DrKunal Ghosh, a professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department in IITKanpur, claimed in his article published in Organiser, the RSSmouthpiece.

The Shiekh Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir had''mischievously'' carved out Muslim-dominated Kargil district byincluding 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 oftheir mother tongue, the Students' Educational Cultural Movement ofLadakh in 1988 raised concerns against it following which the J&KAssembly passed a Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, allowing'Bodhi', the common script of people of Ladakh and Baltistan in PoK, inZanskar.

He cautioned the Army against banishing Ladhaki language in Ladakhon the same lines of Pakistan's policy to vanish Balti language inBaltistan 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 islike 'Devanagari' and Hindi. Pakistan was imposing Urdu on Balti peopleto promote tourism in Baltistan and marketing it as 'little Tibet'.

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

UNI