Pakistan calls Gilgit-Baltistan a disputed territory when the conversation involves the United Nations. It calls it an administrative unit when the conversation involves development projects. It calls it a near-province when elections are held. What it has not fully allowed Gilgit-Baltistan to be, in a formal and fully enforceable sense, is itself.

The region’s identity question predates Pakistan. Gilgit-Baltistan is home to speakers of Shina, Balti, Burushaski, Wakhi, Khowar and several other languages, each with distinct literary and oral traditions. The Burusho people of Hunza, Nagar and Yasin speak Burushaski, which mainstream linguistics classifies as a language isolate with no demonstrated genetic relationship to any other known language family, though one Australian-based linguist has more recently argued for an Indo-European origin, a claim that remains contested rather than settled among specialists. The Balti language preserves features of classical Tibetan that have been lost in Tibet itself. These are not minor ethnographic footnotes. They are markers of a distinctive linguistic heritage that has persisted across centuries of shifting political control.

That distinctiveness has often been treated, under Pakistani administration, as a cultural curiosity at best and as a political afterthought at worst. The medium of instruction in Gilgit-Baltistan’s public schools is Urdu,........

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