Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Feb 8: Rationalised Roman for Kashmiri devised by Dr R L Bhat is a pioneering work to transmit Kashmiri to the young generations. This was the final conclusion arrived at the special sitting held at Delhi with the noted civil servant , M K Kaw and well known linguist Prof Omkar Koul as co-chairmen. The programme was organised under the auspices of Kashmiri Education Culture and Science Society, in one of the special sessions of its 3-day cultural festival Shuhul Taaph, at Pamposh Enclave in Greater Kailash, New Delhi.
Introducing the subject for the discussion of the special session, Prof BB Dhar, President KCESS said that the challenge of preserving the Kashmiri language as all the other languages was to transit it to the younger generation. M K Kaw, the author of several books elaborated on the scripts for writing Kashmir and the problems faced by the younger generations. Living outside Kashmir and not being conversant with the Urdu script the children of the exiled families were being separated from their mother tongue. RRK was a practical effort to make the objective of bringing Kashmiri to the younger generation.
This was followed by a comprehensive presentation by Dr R L Bhat on his standardisation of the Roman/English script for writing Kashmiri without any diacritical marks. Dr Bhat said that Kashmiri language had the misfortune of having being forced into many scripts due to several reasons. Speaking of scripts, Shaardaa is the original script of Kashmir, with evolved as Kashmiri language developed from its prakrit-upabramsha milieu prevalent in Kashmir around the end of first millennium.
Somehow this script was not used for Kashmiri though the two most prominent Kashmiri writers Mahjuur and Azad made a case for adopting it. Thence many scripts have been used for convenience and politics.
Presenting his expert opinion, Omkar N Koul said that while the linguists had to use Universal Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) the common people had to have a more usable modification of the Roman script. He hailed the RRK as a tremendous effort by Dr R L Bhat.
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