Window to Gilgit-Baltistan

Very recently, famous author, Zafarullah Parwan has written a fiction titled  Angar Sitano , thereby playing an important role in promotion of Khowar fiction. In the district of Ghizar, prominent poets and authors of Khowar are: Syed Murad Ali Shah Aajiz, Javed Hayat Kakakhel, Sarfaraz Shah and Shamsul Haw Nawarz. Javed Hayat Kakakhel’s composition “Gurzain” was published in 2018. In addition to Chitral and Ghizar, Khowar is also spoken as a mother tongue communities Swat, Xinjiang, Lower Pamir and Pron, Afghanistan. Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) Assembly passed a Bill regarding inclusion of Khowar along with other languages of the province in the syllabus from first class to secondary level. Work on the syllabus was undertaken till 2013, but it was stopped the same year with the coming of the PTI government. Inyatullah Faizi explains further that the interim caretaker government resumed work on the syllabus in 2018 and currently, 1 st  and 2 nd  class books are under re...

Gilgit-Baltistan is bounded in the north by the Wakhan corridor (Afghanistan) and the Xinjiang region of China, on the south and south-east by Indian-Occupied Kashmir and on the west by Chitral. The Mintaka Pass is the point where the borders of Pakistan, China, Russia and Afghanistan are linked. The strategic rivalry between the British and the Soviet empires for supremacy in Central Asia was known as ‘the Great Game’. The British wanted to protect their interests in the Subcontinent and in Asia against a possible Russian advance. A Russian officer visited Hunza and signed a treaty. His presence in Hunza was taken as the start of the Great Game. Because of this treaty, Col Algernon Durand was sent to Gilgit to analyse the situation. The British at the time were afraid of Russia crossing Pamir and attacking British India through the passes of Chitral and Hunza. This forced the British to develop as the ‘forward policy’. Lord Curzon visited Gilgit even before becoming viceroy of In...