When a Political Leader Speaks the People’s Language: A Welcome Gesture Towards the Preservation of Shina
A Facebook post published by Bagrote Valley, Gilgit, on 25 August 2026 draws attention to a small but deeply meaningful linguistic gesture: the Chief Minister of Gilgit-Baltistan speaking in Shina while addressing people in Shina-speaking areas. The post observes, with a touch of irony, that while some elected representatives struggle even with English in their own constituencies, the Chief Minister’s decision to communicate in the local language is certainly welcome and commendable. It then makes a broader and more important assertion: the preservation of local languages is both a collective obligation and a national responsibility.
That observation deserves to be taken considerably further. In a region as linguistically diverse as Gilgit-Baltistan, language is not merely a medium through which people exchange information. It is a repository of collective memory, a vehicle of cultural identity, and an archive of knowledge accumulated over generations. To speak to a community in its own language is therefore much more than a political courtesy. It is an acknowledgement of that community’s identity, history and intellectual worth.
Speaking the People’s Language Is More Than a Political Gesture
For an elected leader, language carries an unmistakable symbolic significance. Political communication is most effective when it reaches people not merely through words, but through a linguistic register with which they instinctively identify.
When a leader speaks Shina among Shina-speaking communities, the message extends beyond the literal meaning of the words. It conveys familiarity and respect. It says, in effect, that the language spoken in homes, villages, fields and traditional gatherings is worthy of being heard in public life as well.
This is particularly significant in mountainous societies where communities have historically preserved their identity through oral traditions. Before the widespread availability of formal education, books, newspapers, radio and digital media, history, customary law, genealogies, folklore, poetry, agricultural knowledge and collective memories were transmitted primarily through speech. Language was the vessel in which an entire social world travelled from one generation to the next.
Consequently, when a local language weakens, it is not simply a vocabulary that disappears. A portion of the cultural memory encoded within that vocabulary may disappear with it.
Shina: A Language and a Living Cultural Archive
Shina occupies an important place in the linguistic landscape of Gilgit-Baltistan. It is spoken across substantial parts of the region, although its varieties and linguistic environments differ from one locality to another.
Its importance, however, cannot be measured merely by the number of its speakers. Like other indigenous languages of the mountains, Shina contains expressions, metaphors, place-names, kinship terminology, agricultural vocabulary and oral narratives that have developed in close relationship with the landscape.
Mountain societies possess an exceptionally rich vocabulary for their physical environment. Rivers, irrigation channels, grazing grounds, seasonal movements, slopes, passes, forests, glaciers and agricultural terraces are not simply geographical features. They are part of a lived cultural geography. Their names and the stories attached to them often preserve memories that may not exist in written historical records.
This is why the preservation of Shina and other indigenous languages should not be regarded as an exclusively linguistic project. It is equally a project of cultural preservation, historical documentation and intellectual heritage.
The Irony of Linguistic Priorities
The original post also makes a pointed comparison between the Chief Minister speaking Shina and legislators who, according to the post, struggle with English even in their own constituencies. Beneath the humour lies a serious question about our understanding of language.
There is nothing inherently superior about English—or, for that matter, any other dominant language. English has obvious practical importance in higher education, science, technology, administration and international communication. There is every reason to learn it well.
But learning an international language should not require the abandonment, embarrassment or marginalisation of one's mother tongue.
A mature multilingual society does not ask its citizens to choose between their indigenous language and a global language. It enables them to possess both.
Indeed, the strongest linguistic policy would be one in which a child in Gilgit-Baltistan could grow up speaking the language of the home, acquire Urdu for wider national communication, learn English for international and academic purposes, and, where appropriate, gain familiarity with another regional language. Multilingualism should be regarded as an asset rather than as a hierarchy of languages.
The Danger Lies in Linguistic Displacement
Languages rarely disappear overnight. Their decline is usually gradual.
A language begins to retreat when parents stop speaking it consistently to their children. It weakens when children come to associate education and upward mobility exclusively with another language. It becomes confined to domestic conversation when it disappears from public administration, schooling, literature, media and digital communication.
Eventually, young speakers may understand the language without being able to speak it fluently. The next generation may understand only fragments. What was once a living language can then become little more than a collection of remembered words.
This process is particularly important in Gilgit-Baltistan because its linguistic diversity is one of the region's most distinctive cultural characteristics. Shina, Burushaski, Wakhi, Balti, Khowar and other languages represent different historical experiences and cultural worlds. Their coexistence is not a weakness; it is part of the region's civilisational richness.
Local Languages Deserve a Place in Public Institutions
If the preservation of indigenous languages is genuinely considered a national responsibility, symbolic gestures must eventually be followed by institutional measures.
Local languages should have a meaningful presence in cultural programmes, community broadcasting, public awareness campaigns and appropriate local administrative communication. Their literature should be documented, digitised and made accessible to younger generations. Oral histories should be recorded systematically before elderly native speakers pass away.
Particular attention should be given to school education. The early years of a child's education are crucial for cognitive and cultural development. Where feasible, children should be permitted to develop literacy and conceptual understanding with meaningful support in their mother tongue, while simultaneously acquiring Urdu and English.
The objective should not be to replace one language with another. It should be to create a layered multilingual education system in which each language performs a useful role.
Oral History Is Especially Vulnerable
One of the most compelling reasons to protect languages such as Shina is the enormous body of oral history embedded within them.
In villages across Gilgit-Baltistan, elderly men and women may possess knowledge of migration traditions, ancestral settlements, customary practices, old irrigation systems, clan relationships, seasonal grazing routes, local conflicts, traditional medicine, agricultural techniques, folk songs and historical personalities that are scarcely represented in written archives.
Much of this knowledge is transmitted in the local language and often cannot be adequately translated without losing shades of meaning.
When an elderly storyteller dies without his or her testimony being recorded, an irreplaceable historical source may disappear.
This is why linguistic preservation should go hand in hand with oral-history projects. Universities, cultural institutions, local administrations and community organisations could collaborate to record conversations with elderly speakers, transcribe them, translate selected portions and preserve both the original-language recordings and their translations.
Such an archive would be invaluable not only to linguists but also to historians, anthropologists, sociologists and future generations of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Political Leaders Can Set the Tone
The Chief Minister's use of Shina is therefore significant precisely because political leaders possess an unusual ability to influence public attitudes.
When a language is heard from a political platform, it receives a form of public legitimacy. When legislators, officials and educated members of society use it confidently, younger people are less likely to regard it as something belonging only to an older or less-educated generation.
The reverse is also true. If educated people systematically abandon their mother tongues in public life, younger generations may conclude that their ancestral languages have little value in the modern world.
Political leaders can consequently contribute to language preservation simply by speaking local languages where appropriate, incorporating them into public events, encouraging their documentation and recognising their cultural importance.
But the responsibility does not belong to politicians alone.
The Responsibility Belongs to Society
The Facebook post is particularly right in describing the preservation of local languages as a shared responsibility.
Parents have a responsibility to speak their mother tongue with their children.
Teachers have a responsibility to respect and encourage children's linguistic backgrounds.
Writers and poets have a responsibility to create contemporary literature in indigenous languages.
Researchers have a responsibility to document vocabulary, grammar, oral traditions and historical narratives.
Broadcasters and digital creators have a responsibility to produce quality content in local languages.
Government institutions have a responsibility to create an enabling policy environment.
And communities themselves have a responsibility to ensure that their languages remain living means of communication rather than merely objects of nostalgia.
From Tokenism to a Sustainable Language Policy
The danger, however, is that appreciation of indigenous languages may remain confined to ceremonial occasions. Speaking Shina at a political gathering is welcome, but language preservation cannot depend solely upon occasional speeches.
What is needed is a sustained policy.
Gilgit-Baltistan could consider establishing or strengthening a dedicated institutional framework for the documentation and promotion of its indigenous languages. A comprehensive programme could include digital dictionaries, audio archives, oral-history repositories, children's literature, folk-song collections, transcription projects and research grants.
Modern technology offers possibilities that previous generations did not possess. A young person can now record an elderly speaker on a mobile phone and preserve a story that might otherwise vanish. Digital archives can make recordings available to researchers and communities across the world. Social media can provide local-language content with an audience far beyond the village in which it originated.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply to preserve languages in museums or archives. It is to keep them alive in contemporary life.
A Language Is a Way of Seeing the World
Ultimately, the preservation of Shina and other indigenous languages is about preserving ways of seeing and interpreting the world.
Every language organises experience differently. It contains concepts shaped by the environment in which its speakers have lived, worked and interacted over centuries. It reflects relationships between people, land, animals, seasons, mountains and rivers.
When a language disappears, humanity loses one particular linguistic window through which a community has understood its world.
For Gilgit-Baltistan, this consideration assumes even greater significance. The region's extraordinary linguistic diversity mirrors its equally remarkable cultural and geographical diversity. To allow these languages to decline through neglect would be to surrender an important part of the region's heritage.
Beyond Applause: Turning Recognition into Action
The Chief Minister speaking Shina in Shina-speaking areas is therefore more than a pleasant political gesture. It can—and perhaps should—be viewed as an opportunity to reopen a much larger conversation about language, identity and cultural policy in Gilgit-Baltistan.
The gesture deserves appreciation. But appreciation should lead to action.
If local languages are indeed a national responsibility, then they deserve more than occasional ceremonial recognition. They deserve documentation, research, education, literature, digital preservation and a secure place in public life.
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