CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 89 of 120

Correct — D, Monpa. Monpa belongs to Arunachal Pradesh, not to Jammu and Kashmir. It is the language of the Monpa people, about fifty thousand strong, concentrated in Tawang district — where they are the great majority — and in West Kameng, and it is a Tibeto-Burman language written in the Tibetan script. The other three options are all genuinely of Jammu and Kashmir. Koshur is Kashmiri, the single largest language of the territory at close to fifty-three per cent of speakers. Urdu was the official language of the state for decades and remains one of the official languages today. Gujari, or Gojri, is the language of the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities and is spoken by about nine per cent of the population, which places it third after Kashmiri and Dogri. So the odd one out is the one from the eastern Himalaya.

• (a)Urdu — Genuinely a principal language of Jammu and Kashmir. It served as the official language of the state and remains among the official languages of the Union Territory today.
• (b)Gujari — Also genuine. Gojri or Gujari is the speech of the Gujjar and Bakerwal communities of the Pir Panjal and the Chenab valley, and about nine per cent of the population speaks it.
• (c)Koshur — Koshur is simply the Kashmiri language's own name for itself, and Kashmiri is the largest language of the territory at close to fifty-three per cent of speakers. It is in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

Jammu and Kashmir's language map has three broad zones: Kashmiri in the Valley, Dogri in the Jammu plains and foothills, and Pahari and Gojri across the Pir Panjal, with Urdu as the language of administration and of literate exchange across all of them. Kashmiri belongs to the Dardic branch of the Indo-Aryan family, Dogri and Gojri to the western Indo-Aryan group, and Ladakhi, spoken in the neighbouring Union Territory, to Tibeto-Burman.

The item can be answered without knowing anything about Jammu and Kashmir at all, provided Monpa can be placed — and it places itself, because the Monpa are the community of Tawang and their name appears in almost every account of that district. Three of the four options are recognisably north-western and one is eastern Himalayan. Anchor to the exam and then update honestly: at the February 2020 paper, Urdu was the language most candidates would have associated officially with the state; the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020, passed later that year, made Kashmiri, Dogri, Hindi, Urdu and English all official languages of the Union Territory, which is the position today.

• Monpa is a Tibeto-Burman language of Arunachal Pradesh, concentrated in Tawang and West Kameng districts and written in the Tibetan script.
• Kashmiri, whose own name is Koshur, is spoken by about 52.9 per cent of the population of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Dogri accounts for about 20.5 per cent of speakers and Gojri or Gujari for about 9.25 per cent.
• Kashmiri, Dogri, Hindi, Urdu and English are the official languages of the Union Territory under the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Act, 2020.
• Kashmiri and Dogri are both listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

• Not recognising Koshur as the Kashmiri language's own name and rejecting it as unfamiliar.
• Assuming Urdu cannot be a principal language because it is not native to any one district; it is the administrative language across the territory.
• Confusing Monpa with Ladakhi — both are Tibeto-Burman, but Ladakhi belongs to the western Himalaya and Monpa to the eastern.

As an odd-one-out on a state's languages, or as a language-to-family or language-to-state matching set.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Monpa language belongs to which language family?

  • (a)Indo-Aryan
  • (b)Dravidian
  • (c)Tibeto-Burman
  • (d)Austroasiatic

  Answer(c) Tibeto-Burman — spoken in Tawang and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh and written in the Tibetan script.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Gojri or Gujari, one of the principal languages of Jammu and Kashmir, is chiefly the speech of which community?

  • (a)The Ladakhi Buddhists
  • (b)The Gujjars and Bakerwals
  • (c)The Kashmiri Pandits
  • (d)The Dogras of Jammu

  Answer(b) The Gujjars and Bakerwals — pastoral communities of the Pir Panjal and the Chenab valley, about nine per cent of the territory's speakers.