Re: Rahmaan Baba..Poet of the Pukhtuns
did u know that hindko originated in gandhara? i didnt know. just found out today. by the way, i spent some time in kohat and was just wondering...what do they call all these people in kohat who are hindko speakers? are they pathan or are they pushtoon? or are they both or neither?
I hate the word Pathan because it is a mispronunciation, the proper word is Pashtun, way back when Indian Desi people (Hindko, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Gujji etc.) came in contact with Pashtuns they couldn't pronounce "Pashtun" so they mispronounced it as “Pathan”, from then one it has stuck with us and even foreigners such as the British who ruled India used it instead of Pashtun because it’s the term they first heard from Indians, to us Pathan means nothing, please call us Pashtun instead.
I've read up on Gandhara, it was a northwest Indian state in the olden days and it comprised the present day regions of western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, it's people spoke languages which are today classified as dialects of Punjabi, such as Hindko, Potohari and Siraiki, we Pashtuns (or Pathans as you say) came on the scene slightly later.
Hindko people are not Pashtun (or Pathan as you like to call them), they are Hindko which is a separate ethnic group. There are however some Hindko speaking tribes who are of Pashtun origin, they don't speak Pashto anymore because their forefathers intermarried with Hindko women and thus lost their tongue but they continue to share many cultural similarities with us except for language, in most cultures lineage is patrilineal (except Jewish and Native American) so some of them still call themselves Pathan, Pashtun or Afghan, but I wouldn't say they are Pashtun because language is the only real hallmark of an ethnicity, it's the biggest cultural asset of a nation, once you stop speaking a language as your mother tongue you seize to be a part of the related ethnicity, yeah if those tribes readopt Pashto then they will become Pashtuns. There are tribes of Pashtun origin in Afghanistan too who are in a similar situation and have lost their tongue due to interaction with other ethnic groups and now speak Dari or Hazarajati (nothing to do with your region, they are an ethnic group which is racially an amalgam of Mongol and Aryan and live in northern Afghanistan, rather sexy mite I add).
There are also Hindko origin people who are not of Pashtun descent but they have adopted Pashto and refer to themselves as Pashtun because of living in Pashtun dominated areas, these are your shopkeepers and musicians, these calling themselves Pashtun is fine because like I said they now speak Pashto so they are Pashtun, same is the case with people of Punjabi origin (both Muslim and Sikh) who settled in Peshawar and now speak Pashto, they too are Pashtun.
There are other Hindko and Punjabi people who call themselves Pathan just because they live in NWFP, thes are types who are neither of Pashtun descent nor speak Pashto and these calling themselves Pashtun or Pathan is stupid, usually their forefathers were wanna be’s and baselessly passed down the slogan “we are Pathan” from generation to generation which is rather silly because they should be content with who they really are.
Most Hindko people are not of Pashtun descent, they are a separate ethnic group, merely being from a certain region does not make you a part of any ethnicity. The original Hindko people are Desi and are more closely related to Punjabis, Sindhis and North Indians in language, culture, race and heritage than to their Pashtun neighbours (just look at the Awans in Peshawar).
In short you belong to a certain ethnic group based on the language you speak as your mother tongue and not on racial lineage or living in a certain geographical location.
I consider Hindko to be a type of Punjabi, I can tell there are some differences but they are only enough to set Hindko as a separate dialect not separate language, my Mirpuri friends all call themselves Punjabi and Hindko sounds closer to regular Punjabi than Mirpuri does, in the Chakwal region of Punjab they speak exactly like Hindko but they consider themselves proud “mountain Punjabis”, there is no hard or fast rule for being Punjabi, Punjabi tribes have quite diverse racial backgrounds, cover vast landscapes and speak many dialects. Hindko on it’s own can’t be much of an identity, fair enough Punjabi, Sindhi, Hindi/Urdu and other related languages evolved from Hindko and it’s their original base and it was the language of a grand ancient kingdom/state called Gandhara but other than that it doesn’t even have any folklore, poetry or novels to it’s credit, there are some in Punjabi which only need a few words changing and it becomes Hindko but then that just proves it’s all one language.
