Young musicians connect a community across the Line of Control

Sharing Shina songs online, musicians in Kashmir, Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan are keeping their language alive and renewing ties across the divide. This feature is part of a series examining how artificial borders reshape daily life, divide families and force loved ones to navigate the human cost of political geography.

In the remote Tulail Valley close to the Line of Control in Indian-administered Kashmir, 25-year-old singer Aasim Yaseen was walking through his village, Buglinder, when a college student from a neighbouring hamlet stopped him. The young man, Tanveer, took out his phone and played Sangh Mukh Shamah, a song Yaseen had recently released in Shina, their shared language.

“Sometimes I think about going into another profession, but then someone plays my song on their phone, and I keep going.” Across Gurez in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, Drass in Indian-administered Ladakh, and Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan, young musicians like Yaseen are sharing Shina songs on social media.