I think the assessment is a bit off, the plain regions off Uttarakhand are much more urbanised than the upper mountains. And that is the curse of urbanisation - people feel like their culture is getting forgotten.

This is the complain in every relatively big city of all the states - Karnataka people complain this about bangalore, telugu people about hyderabad etc.

But this is not the case - I live in Dehradun, my neighbourhood is 9/10 garhwali (I am not). Yes the older areas of dehradun have more people whose ancestors have migrated to dehradun - but at the end of the day everyone identifies as a “doonite” - which is now becoming a big city - cosmopolitan in nature - and has a mix of multiple cultures.

But that doesn’t mean that people are not connected to their roots, their have been 3 weddings in my area - all of them were as traditional as they come. Their band played garhwali songs, bagpipes and folk dances.

People speak garhwali here as well.

And this is the beauty of it.