Dying kashmiri culture

Amir Ahmad Malik
Kashmir, a place known for its culture in whole world, is on danger of cultural loss. Kashmir apart from scenic beauty, mountains, and tourist destinations is also famous for its rich culture and heritage. Kashmiri culture had been developed in thousands of years. It bears its influence from almost from every part of south Asia. Kashmiri culture consists of language, kashmiri wazwan , shawls , folk music, sufi music ,dress, hospitality etc. Starting from language, kashmiri is the language of kashmiri people speak, in today’s Kashmir the use of kashmiri language is very low. People prefer to talk in english and other languages. Kashmiri is spoken by few. Kashmiri is at risk as it is passing to next generation at very low rate. Very few people feel proud in teaching their children kashmiri language. The biggest problem is as very few people know how to read and write kashmiri language. Kashmiri wazwan, also known as kashmiri cuisine is famous. It consists of various dishes of meat. Initially it only consists of some dishes but with time the number of dishes increased. Some dishes are gushtab, rista, kabab etc. Wazwan is served basically at marriages and other parties. Wazwan is made by a group of people known as ‘waza’ . Nowadays the number of waza,s is declining as nobody is ready to continue their traditional business. Kashmiri handicrafts are other important part of its culture. Willow baskets, papermachie, carpets, shawls especially pashmina are very famous in world. Kashmiri people are forgetting the art of making these things. No person is willing to teach his children this art because of low income from this work. The competition from machine made things had very badly hit this industry. As far as clothing of kashmirs are concerned , their traditional dress is pheran, a long overcoat. Many people wear pheran today also. But pheran had gone through a lot of innovations. Khrao (a wooden footwear), pulehur were very common footwear in anicent Kashmir. But it is very unfortunate that very few people know or had seen these things. These things are only for museums only. It is due to the foreign or synthetic cloths, which had reduced the demand for these products. Only few old people wear these things.
New generation should be made aware about culture and traditions. Seminars and exhibitions should be organised in schools, colleges etc
As far as kashmiri music is concerned it consists of Sufi music, rouf, wanwun and ladishah. We have almost forgotten all these. Sufi music, no doubt there are some singers but the rate at which we are following western music is alarming. Rouf and wanwun are the music which is sang on weddings. Now only few of old generation women know this. Future generation is only inclined to boll wood or western music . Traditional musical instruments are replaced by western instruments. There are few artists who play santoor, rabab etc . Nobody is learning to play these instruments. There is a craze of playing guitar in our youth but we are forgetting our culture day by day. There is never too late. We should realise our mistake and take steps forward for preserving our culture. No doubt kashmiri is taught in schools but efforts should be made to have some course books in kashmiri language. Handicrafts should be encouraged by increasing prices of handicraft products. New generation should be made aware about culture and traditions. Seminars and exhibitions should be organised in schools, colleges etc
(The author is a freelancer. Views is his own, [email protected])