For the love of Dogri, a language that is losing ground

A steady effort is on to preserve and promote Dogri

Every evening, as the sun went down, the melodious notes of Lata Mangeshkar’s Dogri love song, Bhala sipahiya Dogariya, would ring out of the soldiers’ barracks, almost as a ritual, and mingle with the breeze. The song, about a woman urging her Dogra soldier to come back home, carried the echo of the mountain. I would listen to it, mesmerised, barely understanding the words but soaking in its essence.

 
Dogri was one of the languages I grew up listening to. It was the language the soldiers from my father’s Dogra regiment spoke. To my ear, it sounded very similar to Punjabi and yet it was so unique in its tonality. Speak these sentences out aloud and you’ll understand: Ke aal aee? (how are you?). Or, toondda naa ki hai ji? (what is your name?).
 
It never occurred to me that one day, Dogri would become a language that would need preserving. After all, besides being chiefly spoken in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh, it also had roots in parts of northern Punjab — and Pakistan. Today, only about five million people in the world speak this Indo-Aryan language. Compare that to Punjabi, which is spoken by about 130 million.

Dogri writer Kunwar Viyogi

 
“Fewer parents today speak in Dogri with their children, and even if the language is spoken at home, it is hardly taught in schools in the state,” says Lalit Magotra, a Sahitya Akademi award-winning Dogri writer and former president of Dogri Sanstha. As a result, an increasing number of youngsters are today unable to speak the language, even though they might understand it well and may grasp its nuances.
 
“A lost generation,” is how Poonam Singh Jamwal describes them. “I, too, belong to this generation.”
 
Jamwal is on a mission to do all that she can to preserve and promote the language she was born into and which accompanied her through her growing years in the form of a father, an Indian Air Force officer who is today recognised in the Dogri literary circles as Kunwar Viyogi. Known to his colleagues in the air force as Group Captain Randhir Singh, he was barely 40 when he received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for his Dogri long-form poem, Ghar, alongside celebrated Hindi writer Krishna Sobti who won it for Zindaginama.
 
In his lifetime, Kunwar Viyogi wrote hundreds of sonnets in Dogri (so much so that he is called the “Father of Dogri Sonnets”). He penned over 400 ghazals, nearly 300 poems, rubiyan, kundalis, stories and essays. It is a large body of work, all of which was written before 1988, the year his wife and creative muse, Prem, died.
 
Every morning, before she went to school, Jamwal would sit with her father who would read out his writings to her, and put them in context for her to understand. Despite this rich literary atmosphere that enveloped her childhood, Jamwal says she never really learnt to speak the language fluently and, therefore, confidently.
 
That bothers her. “A language is more than just words. It has a spirit, a life and generations of accumulated knowledge and culture,” she says. If a language is lost, an entire heritage is lost.

Kunwar Viyogi, then a serving Indian Air Force officer, receiving the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for his Dogri poem, Ghar. Seen in background is Krishna Sobti

 
Kunwar Viyogi died in 2015. Last year, on September 4, his birth anniversary, Jamwal launched the Kunwar Viyogi Memorial Trust to promote through the medium of art, culture, education and innovation the language her father was so passionate about.
 
Last Saturday, as part of its “Save the Language” campaign, the trust organised a cultural festival at Kingdom of Dreams, Gurugram, which included a kathak adaptation of Kunwar Viyogi’s poem, Ghar. The festival will next travel to Chandigarh, Shimla and Kangra before the grand finale at Jammu. The aim is to popularise the language both within and outside of the state.
 
Three scholarships — for male and female toppers in MA Dogri and for research work on Dogri writers and poets — have also been instituted in association with Jammu university’s Dogri department. An award for the first, or best, book in Dogri too has been announced along with the Dogri Sanstha, as has an artist innovation award.
 
A technology tool to translate to and from the language is also on Jamwal’s mind. But the biggest challenge of all is getting the state to introduce Dogri language at primary school level.
 
Curiously, Dogri education has followed a top-down approach. “The language was first introduced at the postgraduate level and later in colleges,” says Magotra. It was only this week, on June 19, that in a landmark decision, the Jammu & Kashmir government made Dogri, Kashmiri and Bodhi compulsory for classes IX and X in all government-run and recognised private schools in areas where these languages are spoken as the mother tongue.
 
“While this is a crucial step in the right direction, if the language is to thrive and grow, it has to be taught at primary school level,” says Sahitya Akademi award-winning Dogri author Chhatrapal, whose real name is Joginder Pal Saraf but who prefers to go by his penname. A decision to the effect was taken a few years ago and the syllabus was also prepared, but that is where it remains.
 
The politics of the state of Jammu & Kashmir has also taken a toll on Dogri. “We have a Kashmir-centric government,” says Chhatrapal, so Dogri, the language of Jammu, doesn’t get much attention. “Dogri is not even the official language of the state, so much so that to speak in Dogri in the legislative assembly, an MLA has to seek the speaker’s permission.” On his part, Chhatrapal often pretends not to understand any other language but for Dogri when speaking with youngsters in the state. “That leaves them with no choice but to try and speak with me in Dogri,” he laughs.
 

The lost scripts

Written in Devanagri today, Dogri once had its own script that bore close resemblance to the now almost extinct Takri (or Tankri) script, which was used widely till the 19th century and was the language of the royal courts in the pre-independence era. Its alphabets resembled the Gurmukhi script (in which Punjabi is written).

Research indicates that the first reference to Dogri as a distinct language was made in the 13th century in the list of Indian languages compiled by Sufi musician, poet and scholar Amir Khusrau.

Takri itself originated from the ancient Sharda script, which can still be found on the walls in remote villages of Kashmir or on old Muslim graves, along with epitaphs in Persian. Sharda came into existence around the 8th century and was prominently used in Kashmir till the first quarter of the 20th century. Today, only about 10 people in India, a handful of Kashmiri Pandits, can read the script.

Though in 2003 it was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as one of the languages that the Indian government has the responsibility to develop, Dogri does have a few things going for it. For one, it has a rich literary culture, its own grammar, a dictionary and also a newspaper. The country’s first daily newspaper in Dogri, Jammu Prabhat, was launched in 2008 . Dogri music and film industry are, however, almost non-existent, though the National Film Awards have a category for “Best Feature Film in Dogri”. It is another matter that so far the award has been given only once — to Dille Ch Vasya Koi (2011).
 
But the biggest threat to the language is that it is not attracting the children of the state anymore. The government simply must introduce it at primary school level, says Mangotra. “Or have animation films dubbed in Dogri.” A few years ago, when he was president of Dogri Sanstha, Mangotra had five Amar Chitra Katha comic books translated to Dogri. An original comic book, Bawa Jitto, about the inspiring life of a farmer who lived some 500 years ago and who is today worshipped almost as a deity in the region, was also brought out.
 
These might be baby steps, but collectively they hope to counter the overwhelming influence of Hindi and English in the state. “If you ask me today about the future of Dogri, I would say I am uncertain about it. That doesn’t mean I am pessimistic about it,” says Magotra. “Dogri’s future will depend on the government’s policies and the initiatives we, the Dogri speaking people, take.”
 
Chhatrapal is more optimistic. “Will the language dry up? No, it is like the Tawi river (that flows through Jammu). It might change its form, shrink in some places, swell in others, but it will flow on.”