Re: Rahmaan Baba..Poet of the Pukhtuns
parissenor, "Pathan" is a word people of India used to refer to Pashtuns. Pashtuns never use this word among themselves.
However, recently, in Pashto literature, it has acquired a political and cultural connotation. An increasing number of authors, in their writings on cultural and political matters, use it to refer to indiviuals, who, tend to be more Indians than Pashtuns. Those that have settled in non-Pashtun areas, especially Punjab, Sindh, Karachi, etc. and/or have adopted ways and language of the Subcontinent and only nominally retain their link to Pashtun Society, mostly only through ancestral relations, are now called "Pathans". Such people are considered sort of having gone astrayed and lost their identity.
In short, "Pathans" are those intermediate between a Subcontinental and Pashtun identity in the sense of culture and political consciousness but on the way to full assimilation in Subcontinental cultual, political, and ethnic mold. The term is even applied to those that have been raised within Pashtun Society but are now professing or preferring, **over their ancestral culture,** Subcontinental ways, mannerism, language, and political affiliation.
These authors are placing an absolute and uncompromising empasis on the political and cultural expression/assertion of identity. That is how the term has come to acquire a practical and academic significance.
And thank you for your courtesy and feelings of solidarity with us.