Gujjars campaign for national recognition of Gojri
Jammu, Mar 04: The Gujjar community of Jammu and Kashmir today launched a national campaign via social media to include their mother tongue ‘Gojri’ in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India.
“We are looking at a highly innovative campaign whereby social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and other media will be used as a tool to spread our long-pending demand across India,” founder of Tribal Research and Cultural Foundation, Javaid Rahi said.
Rahi, a noted Gujjar scholar, said initially the focus would be to unite the Gujjar community residing in 12 states of north-western India for a joint struggle to get Gojri recognised at the national level.
“Gojri, a tribal language spoken by nearly two million Gujjars in Jammu and Kashmir only, deserves more attention from the government,” he said, adding more than twenty million people speak Gojri across the globe.
Rahi also argued that Gojri has a very rich literature.
At present, more than one thousand books are available in Gojri -mainly covering poetry, prose, folklore, novel, flora-fauna and history, he claimed.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has already included Gojri in the Sixth Schedule of the state’s constitution.
