Kalash Community Ignored in Census Form

Chitral?.. The Kalash community, which stands out as an archiveal?religio-community of its kind in the world, thereby highly endangered and a treasure for Pakistan, has been?ignored in the forms of upcoming Census 2017. No place or cell has been specified for religion and language of the Kalash community of Chitral. MIER, an organization working in languages and cultures in Chitral, expressed great displeasure over this in an urgent meeting with language activists of the district. They expressed their concern over the discriminatory treatment with regional languages of the country. They stressed upon the need that government should own and respect the linguistic diversity of the country and ensure equal representation to all language communities in the Census 2017. By listing all regional languages in the census form or by allotting a space to be filled with a distinct mother tongue of people the Census 2017 can be made more effective with regard to knowing the population of all regional languages of the country, the participants of the meeting said. It is never late for the government to revise the Census forms even now. The concerned ministry should take an immediate step to that effect. .. Atta Hussain Athar, Chitral 24 Feb 2017

3 thoughts on “Kalash Community Ignored in Census Form

  1. There might be a few explanations for the government doing this. One is that government is trying to promote “unity” by trying to downplay the diversity of ethnic groups in Pakistan on the assumption that acknowledging diversity might create disloyalty towards the country from minority ethnic groups. Another explanation is that the census bureau employees are just lazy. Or maybe they are incompetent and not educated about the linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity of Pakistan, and specially districts like Chitral. I’m going to say that they’re either lazy or incompetent. The third option of them trying to promote unity would not make sense because diversity doesn’t create divide, narrow-mindedness does. People can still be loyal to the country while maintaining their own culture and customs: case and point, the people of Chitral and GB.

  2. Panjabi mindset is major cause of the negligence.Simmilarly ,the hatred of Muhajir elite in power does not give any space to our indigenous languages and culture.

    1. The educated muhajir elite is all but gone and replaced with MQM thugs thanks to the powers that created them, along with many other terrorist organizations. They’re trying their best to make Lahore the center of everything by trying to ignore Karachi, which is the true cosmopolitan city of Pakistan. They moved the flm industry to Lahore and it failed. They moved PCB to Lahore and it failed too. They put their people incharge of PIA by replacing the educated muhajirs and it has become one of the worst airlines of all times. Their intentions are bad and that’s why anything they touch turns to dust. Let’s hope the people of Chitral are resistant enough and refuse the census until their is proper recognition of their identity.

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