Dadkhai, a remote community in Kashmir, has the highest prevalence of deaf-mutism in the world. How did this happen?
As I entered Dadkhai—a remote, picturesque village on top of a hillock surrounded by the mighty Himalayas—the most immediate thing I noticed was the stark silence. There are no children playing games and screaming loudly, no adults gossiping and laughing and haggling, and none of the sort of bustling noises you’d typically hear in any other village in the Indian-administered side of Kashmir.
When I visited his home, his children were outside working on building a wall around a vegetable garden. Hanief told me they are master masons but they cannot speak or hear. “They are deaf and mute,” he said. “You have to know their language and as a parent, you die every day thinking about what will happen to them after our death.”Both Shabir and Aftab looked toward their father and began to speak to each other in sign language. “They are asking why these doctors are here.
And so experts believe that consanguineous marriages within the village over decades mean the hereditary mutation has quickly spread down from generation to generation. Government data reveals that at least 83 people, mostly females, are affected by the defective gene, which has torn through 55 families in the village.
As I spent more time in Dadkhai, I spoke to another villager, Gulam Nabi, who has two deaf and mute children. “We can’t go outside the village because if our kids need anything, how would they ask for anything?” he told me.
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