By: Irshad Ahmad Shah
In the quiet valleys of the Himalayas, the Kashmiri language—spoken by over 6.8 million people—is a living testimony to the region’s rich cultural and linguistic heritage. Yet, in the age of artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP), Kashmiri remains one of the least digitally supported languages.
As the world races toward multilingual AI, the inclusion of Kashmiri is not just a technological aspiration but a cultural imperative. Kashmiri, classified under the Dardic group of the Indo-Aryan language family, boasts a unique morphosyntactic and phonological structure that sets it apart from its linguistic neighbors. Despite its rich oral and literary traditions, Kashmiri faces growing threats: language shift among diaspora communities, lack of digital representation, and an absence of standardized computational tools. AI and NLP can change that trajectory—but only if given attention.
Now there is a question why NLP for Kashmiri matters, It is because it allows machines to understand, interpret, and generate human language. For Kashmiri, this means the ability to develop tools for machine translation, voice recognition, sentiment analysis, and even automated education platforms in the mother tongue. These aren’t luxuries—they’re lifelines for a language at risk.
Efforts have already begun, albeit modestly. In a breakthrough initiative, researchers like Lone et al. (2022) developed a Kashmiri-to-English machine translation system using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to learn linguistic patterns from bilingual corpora. This work is particularly groundbreaking as it lays the foundation for future multilingual AI applications in Kashmiri.
Similarly, another study of Farooq et al. (2023) used ensemble learning techniques to detect cybercrime in Roman-script Kashmiri on social media platforms, achieving impressive accuracy using a combination of lexical features and machine learning models. These efforts are crucial, given the growing use of Roman Kashmiri in online spaces by younger generations.
Beyond the Tech: tool of Cultural Preservation
While the technical gains are notable, the true value of NLP in Kashmiri lies in cultural preservation. Languages don’t just carry words; they carry worldviews. By empowering Kashmiri through AI, we protect oral traditions, literature, and identity. In diaspora communities, where assimilation often threatens linguistic continuity, AI-based language tools can bridge generations.
The inclusion of Kashmiri in global AI agendas also speaks to ethical AI development. Languages like Kashmiri remind us that technology must serve not only the dominant tongues but also the marginalized voices. The digital future should be inclusive—not just linguistically, but socially.
A Call to Action
The road ahead is long, but the first steps have been taken. What’s needed now is investment—from governments, academia, and the tech industry. Open-source platforms, collaborative research, and public-private partnerships can accelerate development and ensure that Kashmiri has a rightful place in the global AI narrative. To ignore Kashmiri in the AI era would be to silence millions. To include it is to affirm that every language, no matter how geographically confined or politically marginalized, deserves a future.
The writer is a Research Scholar at Department of Food Science and Technology in Food Molecular Biology Laboratory, Pondicherry University. Can be mailed at [email protected]
