Press Council of India Probes ‘Bias Against Kashmiri Language’ in Election Ads

In a region where language is deeply intertwined with identity, the silence in Kashmiri during the 2024 election campaign has spoken volumes—and not in a way that comforts its speakers. 

A formal complaint by Kahwat, the Valley’s only prominent Kashmiri-language daily, alleging exclusion from Election Commission advertisements, has prompted the Press Council of India to launch an official investigation—bringing a long-simmering issue to the national spotlight.

The controversy traces back to the recent parliamentary and assembly elections, where the Election Commission rolled out a series of informational ads across various languages. But missing from the multilingual outreach was Kashmiri—the mother tongue of millions in the region. Kahwat’s management squarely blamed Mohammad Aslam Choudhary, then Joint Director of the Information Department, accusing him of orchestrating the exclusion as part of a wider pattern of institutional neglect.

“This isn’t just about one newspaper or one election,” said a spokesperson from Kahwat. “It’s about a language being systematically sidelined by the very institutions meant to represent all citizens equally.”

The complaint, submitted to both the Press Council and the Chief Electoral Officer of Jammu and Kashmir, has since rippled through the local media landscape, sparking an outcry from other Urdu and Kashmiri publications. Many say this is only the latest chapter in a history of marginalization that has left local language journalism struggling to survive.

In democracies, language is power—and during elections, it becomes a tool of participation. Critics argue that leaving Kashmiri out of official electoral messaging isn't just a bureaucratic lapse; it’s a breach of constitutional principles and an affront to cultural dignity. “If you erase the language from public discourse,” one editor lamented, “you erase the people who speak it.”

The Press Council’s response has been swift, with demands for detailed records: which ads were released, in which languages, and how they were distributed. For many in the local media, this rare intervention from a national body is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stifling atmosphere.

“This is the first time in years that someone beyond the Valley is listening,” said a senior journalist. “We’ve been raising these concerns for decades, but they’ve always hit a wall.”

Kashmiri, far from being a fading dialect, is a robust, literary language—rooted in centuries of poetry, storytelling, and scholarship. It lives through newspapers, magazines, and the everyday conversations of people across the Valley. Yet in official corridors, it often finds itself treated as an afterthought—if acknowledged at all.

Now, with the Press Council’s eyes on the issue, there’s a flicker of hope. But history has made Kashmiri journalists cautious. “We’ve seen too many inquiries go nowhere,” one editor said. “The real test will be whether this leads to change—or just another file collecting dust in Delhi.”

For a region grappling with layers of identity, conflict, and representation, the fight to preserve and respect its language is more than symbolic—it’s existential. And for Kashmiri-language media, the stakes couldn’t be higher.