Great beauty

RECENTLY, I attended the press conference for the Adab Festival, an event that features prominently on the nation’s cultural and literary calendar. I’m always glad to see regional and provincial languages promoted at our literary festivals, and this year at Adab, one of the languages of Gilgit-Baltistan — Burushaski to be precise — was included in a mushaira in which poets Ahmed Ali Jan and Qamar Kazmi participated.

This inclusion resonated with me this year because I’ve been teaching expository writing at the AKU’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences this semester, and many of my students come from Gilgit-Baltistan, Chitral, Hunza, Kohistan. They’ve left their homes up in the mountains to seek knowledge in the big bad city of Karachi, but they’re also educating everyone here about themselves, their land, culture, norms and values, and their dreams and hopes for the future.

At first I had no idea of Gilgit-Baltistan’s Buddhist history, or how Sufi preachers brought Islam to Baltistan from Persia and Central Asia. Nobody taught me that the Gilgit Scouts mutinied in 1947 to overthrow the Dogra kings of Jammu and Kashmir, and that’s how Gilgit-Baltistan came under Pakistan’s jurisdiction. We still operate in a headspace where those separate regions are collectively and dismissively called ‘the Northern Areas’ and envisioned as a land of great natural beauty simply waiting for us to discover it. We lack true understanding or knowledge of its rich history, culture, religions, and societies. Part of this is because of its isolation — the Karakoram Highway reconnected Gilgit-Baltistan by road to the rest of the country in 2017. But even now, we do not care to learn about their religions, their folklore, or their political aspirations to becoming a fifth province of Pakistan.

I now know the names of the languages: Burushaski, Shina, Khowar and Waakhi, as I hear the students speaking them every day in the halls of the university. These young adults are trying to figure out their place in the federation of Pakistan. As their society transitions, they are vulnerable to outside forces that threaten to overwhelm their culture and exploit their material wealth. The promotion of Gilgit-Baltistan’s languages and literature (mostly an oral tradition) at festivals that can showcase their art, their music, their culture, their scholars, is a huge opportunity for cultural diplomacy within our nation.

We lack true knowledge of GB’s rich history.

This year, sociologist Dr Nosheen Ali and research scholar Aziz Ali Dad have established the very first independent press in Gilgit-Baltistan, Raachi Publications. It is named after the traditional female deity who is the guardian spirit of the land. Raachi’s first book is Beyond the Mountains: Social and Political Imaginaries in Gilgit Baltistan, co-edited by Dr Ali and Aziz Ali Dad. It’s been successfully launched in Pakistan, the UK and the US, where Dr Ali teaches at New York University. When Aziz Ali Dad gave a talk at my university this month, I was informed the book is already out of print.

The book consists of 16 chapters written by different researchers that explore a multitude of facets about life, land and social thought in Gilgit-Baltistan. Muhammed Feyyas discusses geopolitics, statehood and violence; Khalid Manzoor Butt writes of ethnic diversity and collective actions. There are several chapters on politics and governance in Gilgit-Baltistan, and how the people are struggling for participation. Dr Ali writes a chapter identifying Gilgit-Baltistan as the “Eco-Body” of the nation. The book is a perfect representation of the region: multilingual, collaborative and indigenous, which also reflects the ethos and social awareness of its people as it passes throu­­gh a crucible of mo­­dernisation and de­­-velopment. They worry: what of theirs will truly survive?

Another thing I have learned is the Gilgit-Baltistan reverence for the natural world and everything in it. The animist religious tradition believed that not just humans, but also animals, mountains and rocks have a spirit; glaciers have genders and can be ‘married’ (as described in Uzma Aslam Khan’s excellent Thinner Than Skin).

Aziz Ali Dad spoke of how Gilgit-Baltistan is the land of juniper trees, and that these trees were where fairies loved to perch in throngs. But now, instead of fairies, people look at those juniper trees and only see the money they can fetch on the market.

The people of Gilgit-Baltistan see their land and their lives as rich, thriving and meaningful. They seek a path to development that preserves and restores their heritage, keeping their values and voices intact. Sometimes it’s hard to see the reading and writing of books as a political act, but amplifying Gilgit-Baltistan narratives is vital if we want to face the future as a unified nation, not a divided entity.

The writer teaches expository writing at AKUFAS.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2025

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