Group native to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces of Pakistan. However, an indeterminate number have left the region and now live in other parts of South Asia, such as the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir.
Hindkowans speak Hindko, a Lahnda language, and is native to the northern regions of Pakistan primarily concentrated in the Hazara division, and urban centers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan such as Peshawar, Kohat and Mansehra. It is for this reason that alternatively, the term "Kharian/Kharay or city-dweller" maybe sometimes be used for the Hindkowan.
Origin
H.A. Rose, author of Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier has defined Hindkowans or Hindkis as follows:
Hindki, a generic term, half contemptuous, applied to all Muhammadans who being of Hindu origin speak Hindko and have been converted to Islam in comparatively recent times. In Bannu the term usually denotes an Awan or Jat cultivator, but in a wider sense it includes all Muhammadans who talk Hindi, Panjabi or any other dialect derived from them.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Imperial Gazetteer (1905) regularly refers to their language as Hindko, which means "Indian mountains."According to the publication Hindko and Gujari:
"More than one interpretation has been offered for the term Hindko. Some associate it with India, others with Hindu people, and still others with the Indus."
The term may well be the Persic reference meaning "Indus mountains" since the words "Hind" and "koh" mean Indus/Indic and moutains respectively in Persian. The term is also found in Greek references to the mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan as Καύκασος Ινδικός (Caucasus Indicus, or the Hindu Kush)
Hindkowans who are sometimes referred to as Punjabi Pathans. While literally, the term Punjabi Pathan can only be more correctly used to refer to Afghan/Pashtoon/Pathan tribes settled in Punjab, for example the Niazis of Mianwali and speak Seraiki language and those living in Attock district of Punjab who speak Hindko language. Outside of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the term "Pathan" may however, simply be used for anyone belonging to the area (whether they be Pashto, Hindko, Turwali, Kohistani etc. speaking), since the people are perceived by others to share similar cultural traits such as the "pathanwalgi" among the Chach and Hazareywal which analogous to pashtunwali.
In Afghanistan, a group of Hindus still continue to speak Hindko and are referred to as Hindki which according to Grierson is a variant of the term Hindko However, in Pakistan the term is considered slightly pejorative and hence Hindkowan or Hindkun is prefferred on pas with the term Pashtun (the dominant and more numerous ethnic group in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province
Long before the partition of British India, Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, employed the term Hindko to mean "the language of Hindus" (viii, 1:34).[10] However, this is hotly disputed in Pakistan.[20] Farigh Bukhari and South Asian language expert and historian Christopher Shackle believe that Hindko was a generic term applied to the Indo-Aryan dialect continuum in the Pakistani northwest frontier territories and the adjacent district of Attock in the Punjab, Pakistan province to differentiate it in function and form from Pashto. Linguists classify the language into the Indic group.
Religion
Hindkowans, like other Indo-Aryan peoples originally practiced Hinduism; for this reason, the term "Hindko" itself is defined as the "language of the Hindus." As such, there are a number of Hindu Hindkowans Some of these Hindu Hindkowans are traders and over time, have settled in areas as far as Kalat, Balochistan Other Hindu Hindkowans migrated to India from their native region of Sarhad after the partition of India in 1947 During the Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent, which took place from the 12th century A.D. onwards, many of the Hindkowans converted to Islam. Today, most of the Hindkowan population is Sunni Muslim. Later, with the spread of Sikhism and the rise of the Sikh Empire beginning in the eighteenth century A.D., some Hindkowans, both Hindu & Muslim, became Sikhs.Like the Hindus, many Sikh Hindkowans migrated to Hindustan after the partition of India in 1947.Demographics
There are no fresh and authentic figures on the speakers of Hindko language. However, according to indirect method of household rate employed in the 4th Population Census of 1981, an estimated 2.4 per cent of the total population of Pakistan and estimated 10 per cent of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa speak Hindko as their mother language, with more rural than urban households reporting Hindko as their household language.No information was gathered on the Hindko language in the 5th Population Census carried out in 1998 as Hindko language column was removed from the census form much to the dismay of Hindkowans. The largest geographically contiguous group of Hindko-speakers is concentrated in the districts of Peshawar, Abbottabad, Kohat, Attock District, Nowshera, Haripur, Mansehra and Mardan of Pakistan
Tribal Communities
People here tend to associate themselves with larger families instead of a language per se. The major tribes of Hazara include the Awan, Bib, Bomba, Dhund Abbasi, Gakhar, Gujar, Karlal, Mughals, Ghaznavis, Maliar, Parachas, Sarrara, Qazis, Sayyids, Mashwanis, Tareens, Swatis, Tahirkhelis, Khankhel, Tanolis, Dilazaks, Jadoons, Alizai, Khattak, Barakzai, Kakar, Umerzai, and Yousafzai. The Pashtun tribes who settled in Districts like Abbotabad, Haripur and Mansehra, Peshawar and Kohat adopted Hindko as their first language and gained political power in these areas during the British rule.[citation needed]. The Hindko speaking people living in major cities Peshawar, Kohat, Nowshera and chhachh area of Attock are bilingual in Pashto and Hindko. Similarly many Pashto speaking people in districts like Mansehra especially in Agror Valley and northern Tanawal (Shergarh), have become bilingual in Pashto and Hindko.
Distribution
The speakers of Hindko live primarily in seven districts in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa: Mansehra, Mardan, Abbottabad, Haripur, Peshawar, Nowshera and Kohat in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as well as the Attock and Rawalpindi districts in the Punjab and parts of Kashmir; Jonathan Addleton states that Hindko is the most significant linguistic minority in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, represented in nearly one-fifth of the province's total households." In Abbotabad, 98 per cent of households reported speaking Hindko, in Mansehra District 77 per cent, in Haripur District around 85 per cent, in Peshawar District 15 per cent, and in Kohat District 10 per cent (1986).[citation needed] Testing of inherent intelligibility among Hindko dialects through the use of recorded tests has shown that there is a northern (Hazara) dialect group and a southern group. The southern dialects are more widely understood throughout the dialect network than are the northern dialects. The dialects of rural Peshawar and Talagang are the most widely understood of the dialects tested. The dialect of Balakot is the least widely understood.
Amb was a princely state of the former Indian Empire, with internal autonomy but under the "suzerainty" of the British crown. In 1947, by the Indian Independence Act 1947, the British abandoned their supremacy, and following the Partition of India Amb's Nawab decided to give up the independence the state had previously enjoyed by acceding to the new country of Pakistan. However, Amb continued as a distinct state within Pakistan until 1969, when it was incorporated into the North-West Frontier Province. In 1971, the royal status of the Nawab was abolished by the Government of Pakistan.
![[flag of
Tanawal State, commonly known as Amb]](http://www.worldstatesmen.org/pk-amb.gif)
