Reclaiming My Mother Tongue: A Kashmiri Story of Shame, Loss, and Return.

I grew up in Kashmir.

At home, we spoke Kashmiri all the time. Fluently. Naturally. Without thinking. It wasn’t something we were “preserving” — it was just life. It was the language of laughter, arguments, affection, gossip, and silence.

And honestly, there was pride in it.

Even in upper-middle-class families like mine, Kashmiri wasn’t looked down upon inside the home. It was normal. It was ours.

But outside the home, things were very different.

I went to a missionary convent school. English was everything there — English was the language of intelligence, success, confidence, “modernity.” Urdu was also present in social life. But Kashmiri? It quietly disappeared in public.

The school had a mix of students — some middle class, some very wealthy, some whose families had already left Kashmir or were educated abroad. And I noticed something even as a child: the more “elite” someone seemed, the less likely they were to speak Kashmiri.

No one told me directly, “be ashamed of your language.”

But I learned it anyway.

I learned it in the way people reacted.
In the way Kashmiri sounded “too local.”
In the way confidence came easier in English.
In the way speaking Kashmiri in public suddenly felt… exposed.

So I did what many children do.

I split my life in two.

At home: Kashmiri.
Outside: English and Urdu.

Slowly, Kashmiri became something private. Almost hidden.

Then I left for the United States.

And something unexpected happened there.

The shame softened.

Maybe because no one knew what Kashmiri “should” sound like.
Maybe because distance makes things less heavy.
Maybe because survival forces you into English anyway, so identity gets blurred.

I became fully assimilated. English became my professional language, my parenting language, my thinking language. I spoke it with patients, colleagues, my children, everyone.

And Kashmiri just… faded into the background.

Then came COVID.

And something in me shifted.

I started thinking about home differently. About loss. About mental health stigma in Kashmiri communities. About silence. About how much suffering never gets named.

And I felt this strange pull — to speak again in my mother tongue.

So I started making mental health content in Kashmiri.

I honestly didn’t know what would happen.

But people listened.

Some videos got thousands of likes. Slowly, a small community formed. And what made me happiest wasn’t the numbers — it was the feeling that something locked away was opening again.

Mental health conversations were finally happening in Kashmiri.

That itself felt huge.

But there was something else I started noticing too.

A kind of double shame.

Shame around mental health.
And shame around the language itself.

People would tell me — directly or indirectly — that Kashmiri is “not a professional language,” or that it feels “low status,” or that people avoid speaking it in public spaces.

Some even said it more harshly than that.

And it hurt… but it also didn’t surprise me.

Because I had once believed something similar myself.

What confused me the most was this contradiction:

At home, Kashmiri is still alive.
Emotionally, it is still rich.
But publicly, it feels like it is shrinking.

More and more, younger people move toward English and Hindi because those languages feel like opportunity, mobility, safety.

And I keep asking myself — is this just natural change?

All languages evolve. Some fade. Some survive. That’s history.

Or is something else happening too?

Is it also pressure? Hierarchy? Politics? Identity shaping itself around power?

I don’t fully know the answer.

What I do know is this:

When a language starts feeling “embarrassing,” it doesn’t die because it is weak.

It dies because people stop feeling safe using it.

After 2019, when Article 370 was removed, something else shifted again in how Kashmir was seen and governed. For many people, it felt like another layer of distance from autonomy and identity — whether political, emotional, or cultural.

I don’t write about this as a political analyst.

I write about it as someone who has lived inside the emotional ripple of these changes.

Because alongside political change, there is always cultural change. Sometimes visible. Sometimes quiet. Sometimes internal — inside people’s minds.

And language sits right in the middle of that.

At some point, I started slowing down my podcast work.

Not because I stopped caring.

But because life in the US became busier, and sustaining content in Kashmiri took time, energy, emotional effort.

Still, I’m proud of it.

Because something real happened.

People began talking about mental health in Kashmiri.
That alone feels like a shift that won’t disappear.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe not everything is meant to scale forever.

Maybe some work is just meant to reopen a door.

What stays with me most is this:

I once felt ashamed of my own language.

Then I learned to speak it again in public.

And somewhere in between those two versions of me… healing happened.

Not just for me — but for others too.

I think about languages like Hebrew — how something that was nearly dormant in daily life came back into full living use.

And I wonder if Kashmiris could ever move in that direction, too.

Not through politics alone.

But through pride.
Through everyday speech.
Through children hearing it without shame.
Through professionals using it without hesitation.
Through voices like mine — and many others — continuing, even imperfectly.

Because in the end, a language doesn’t survive in institutions.

It survives in mouths.
In homes.
In relationships.
In love.

And that’s really what I’m trying to hold onto.

by

Dr. Najmun

Image by: @naveeday from Unsplash