Thread by @frontierindica

Lol the wiki on Nepali language has some inscription in Doti as apparently the oldest remaining example of the use of the early Khas language which would go on to father modern day Nepali. I suppose this is also the logic used by a section of more chauvinistic types there who say

Dotyali (and by extension Kumaoni if you follow this logic since the two are cognates) is just a western dialect of the standard register of Nepali which really emerged as a full on national tongue from the lands of the original Gorkha kingdom.

Problem of course is that even

before you actually reach the Nepali speaking core zones you bump into varieties like Acchami among others which themselves are so distant from Dotyali/Doteli that they are borderline different language groups as per actual linguistic studies (standard linguistic convention is

60% or more means both are same language/one is dialect of the other less than that usually strong indicator that they're distinct languages which don't work together very well irl). Obviously this means that once you move further on to proper standard Nepali which is eastwards

in its core areas still,6 you definitely aren't going to hit that magic 60% mark. Moreover, given the earliest khas language inscriptions actually come the Doti region and not the core Gorkha province or neighbouring areas of their ancestors, wouldn't then Dotyalis and heck legit

Indian citizen Kumaonis be able to claim that actually it's Nepali which is a dialect of Kumaoni-Dotyali! The logic is also flawed but definitely a little more sensible than the first hypothesis.

Anyways, all this chit chat aside, Nepal's gormint actually did a pretty bro tier

job (from a central pahari pov). They recognized that Dotyali can be termed as a separate language from Nepali and gave people the option to choose it as their mother tongue just like any other officially recognized languages there in their 2011 Census. And the Dotyalis are an

incredibly proud people when it comes to their language and heritage. Just skimmed through a research paper which sampled several hundred villagers across Dotyali speaking areas and literally almost 94-95 per cent of them said they want their kids to get educated in Dotyali not

Nepali/English/Hindi etc as a first choice. (second choice was Nepali if they had to choose some other tongue).

And these are incredibly poor, simple people as a general rule. They come all the way to cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad to get jobs of 15-20K for essentially

slave labour type working conditions and hours. One such guy I spoke to was in his late 20s had moved his wife and little baby daughter to Bangalore for 18K as some PG housekeeper who basically did everything checked people in, cleaned up the place (his wife also did a lot of

these chores to help him; basically it was a two-person job paying 9K in practical terms 7 days a week always on call- the real blackpilled life of migrant working class folks). But guy was absolutely clear that he was a Nepali in his citizenship but his identity, his culture,

his language his festivals everything was Dotyali and he knew well enough that his people were part of the Kumaon axis and central pahari continuum (I mean obviously not in those terms but a primal understand of this idea of extended ethnic fraternity).

Now come to Vishwaguru

paradise on earth most tolerant most lovey dovey minority rights ka eternal rakhwala as if being human was turned into a real life Nation State lol: here the average hillman somehow has had this subconscious idea fed into him that he speaks some primitive ganvaar dialect and he

is only going to reveal his savage origin and backward background if he spoke in that 'Garhwali dialect' or 'Kumaoni creole'. And unlike Dotyalis, and this is a matter of great shame for both ethnic groups, a very large minority, if not maybe a plurality of Garhwali-Kumaoni

people would much rather their children be taught in a language shoved top down from Delhi than in their own mother tongues. This has thankfully slowly started changing even though number of speakers continues to shrink for both. And we haven't even yet again mentioned how so

many traditional rituals like bali pratha, pahari variants of holi, igas bagwal are getting butchered at the hands of a State which couldn't give a toss, and frankly, a people who seemed to be happy to be one day British subjects of United Provinces, then next residents of Uttar

Pradesh- Independent and pure blooded Indians! Then someone says call your state uh Uttaranchal 'cause it sounds smooth, so okay, now we are suddenly "Proud Uttaranchalis", then another neta comes along and says wait a sec this is a congi plan for some nasty end, actually let's

go with this one I dreamt of last night, 'Uttarkhand!' yes! so suddenly we flip and fly into being 'Patriots of Beloved Uttarakhand Uber alles! Yay"

And some have taken up made up new identities so seriously that they'd get offended if you talked of Garhwali & Kumaoni heritage

as distinct things for more than 30 seconds. "Arey tum ye sab garhwali-kumaoni hi karte rahoge baant kyu rahe ho hamare Uttarakhand ko? Ham sab Uttarakhandi hain ye garhwali kumaoni bakwaas band rakho!"

Of course what's missed is that Garhwal-Kumaon are names for our homelands

for a thousand years each, Uttarakhand was some babu term just picked up first in the 60s or so, then suddenly thrust as this sacred eternal identity post state creation two decades back even though nobody practically, organically had in any meaningful way used that term.

tl;dr

just more uppity border ethnic' ranting once more