Of a population of 12.5 million in Jammu and Kashmir, just 350 people speak Srinagar Burushaski. However, in the Hunza, Nagar, and Yasin valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan, claimed by Pakistan as its fifth province, the language is spoken by around 100,000 people.

Professor Sadaf Munshi, at the University of North Texas, works on Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, Urdu, Kashmiri, Romani or “Gypsy” language) and Burushaski. Her work began in 2003, documenting during curfews in the strife-torn Kashmir Valley. She initially faced resistance from young men from the community, suspicious of her research to “decode” the language. Munshi has published her work in the book, Srinagar Burushaski (Brill), offering a structural description of Burushaski spoken in Srinagar.

Bunshi initially met someone from a Srinagar community referred to as “Bota Rajas”, which she ultimately discovered as being Burushaski, a language isolate yet primarily spoken in the Hunza, Nagar and Yasin valleys in Pakistan. Most members of the Burushaski-speaking community in Srinagar are the descendants of Raja Azur Khan, the crown prince of the then Gilgit Agency in the late 19th century.

Much work has attempted to explain the linguistic origins of Burashaski, but a fully convincing relationship has not been established. John Bengtson, Sergei Starostin, and Ilija Čašule, have all attempted to define the language.