Kashmiri will survive in grief, sorrow and lament: Padma Shri nominee Shauq

Professor Shafi Shauq, a 75-year-old poet, linguist and translator from Kashmir who was nominated for the Padma Shri Award, connected Monday (January 26, 2026) said Kashmiri connection is that of workers and peasants and volition survive.

In an interrogation to The Hindu, Mr. Shauq, who hails from Shopian’s distant colony of Kapran, said Kashmiri connection volition outlive the threats posed by the cyber epoch and English.

“Kashmiri connection is the connection of workers and peasants. Kashmiri connection does not request a poet, a writer, a writer oregon a connection activistic to survive. It’s a spoken language. It volition past successful grief, sorrow and lament,” Mr. Shauq said.

He described the Padma Shri award, among the highest civilian honours successful India, arsenic “an acknowledgement of the richness of Kashmiri language, its antiquity and the value it holds successful the sub-continent and globally.” 

“The grant is simply a heartening gesture. It is truly a infinitesimal of pridefulness that I was considered for the astir prestigious grant and was considered worthy it. I person ever held the origin of Kashmiri connection of foremost importance, adjacent much than idiosyncratic self,” Mr. Shauq, who has authored and translated implicit 100 books, said. 

For Mr. Shauq, Kashmiri connection “defines the individuality of radical of Kashmir and supports their existence”. “The Kashmiri connection is known arsenic ‘Koshir’ and the radical arsenic ‘Koshur’. They are synonymous. The connection adjacent survived the domination of Sanskrit successful the region,” the writer, who served arsenic Dean of the Faculty of Arts till 2010 astatine the University of Kashmir, said.  

Mr. Shauq has translated from Kashmiri to English works of each fashionable Sufi poets who wrote betwixt the periods of Mahmud Gami (19th century) and Shams Fakir (early 20th century). He besides translated English classics of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant into Kashmiri, and the fashionable publication ‘Gul Gulshan Gulfam’ by Pran Kishore from Kashmiri to English.