Names of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

For over a hundred years after its founding as a province of British India in 1901, it was known as the North-West Frontier Province (Pashto: شمال مغربی سرحدی صوبہ‎ Śhumāl maġribī sarhadī sūbha). Unofficially, it was known as Sarhad (Urdu: سرحد‎), derived from the province's Urdu name, which means "frontier".

Pakhtunkhwa, Pakhtoonkhwa, Pukhtunkhwa or Pashtunkhwa (Pashto: پښتونخوا‎) has often been the name used by the Pashtun people for the Pashtunized and Pashtun-dominated areas of Pakistan. More recently it was used by Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan as the name by which they wanted to rename the former North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where they are the ethnic majority.

Pakhtunkhwa (and the other transliteration variants) is derived from Pakhtun and khwa, the former refers to the ethnic group and the latter literally means "heart".[eg 1] Metaphorically, it is used to indicate "near the Pakhtuns (Pashtuns)". Nationalist Pashtuns claim Pakhtunkhwa is an old name of the area inhabited by Pashtuns. But in fact Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan) proposed this name as alternative to Pakhtunistan to military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1978, when the latter refused to accept the demand from the former to rename the NWFP as Pashtunistan. The famous Greek historian Herodotus had recorded it as Paktia, but Pashtun poets from the time of Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori down to the present age, have been mentioning it as Pakhtunkhwa.

The earliest available historical evidence is Akhund Darweza's (died 1638) Makhzanul Islam (written between 1603 and 1612). A verse in this book reads: "Pakhtunkhwa pa misal shpa wa, dai deewa wo pa andher ke." (Translation: Pakhtunkhwa was like a night and he [Pir Baba Syed Ali Termezi] was like a candle).

Similarly, the often-quoted two lines of a poem by Ahmad Shah Abdali (1723–1773), the Founding Father of Afghan state, mention Pakhtunkhwa as the land of the Pashtuns:

Da Dehli takht herawoma che rayad kram Zama da khpale Pakhtunkhwa da ghro saroona

Translation: I forget my Delhi throne when I recall the mountain peaks of my own Pakhtunkhwa.

After him, Pashtun poets and writers have frequently used this name for the area which was later named as North-West Frontier Province by the British after they occupied and separated it from today's Afghanistan dividing the Pashtuns into four divisions. The word Pakhtunkhwa was also used in the modern poetry by contemporary poets like Qalandar Momand (1930–2003) long before it was suggested as the nomenclature for the NWFP.

Dr. A. H. Dani, a well known historian and archaeologist, presently the Director of the Islamabad-based Center for the Study of the Civilizations of Central Asia, told Dawn that Pakhtunistan is a political name but Pakhtunkhwa is not. "Culturally there is no doubt that the land was called Pakhtunkhwa in Pashto literature since the 15th century (we have a trace of literature since that time only). The term has been applied for both tribal and settled areas, he added.

Besides Pashtus, there are many non-Pashtuns who have mentioned this name in their writings. A book by French orientalist James Darmesteter has the title, Da Pakhtunkhwa Bagh w Bahar, a selection of Pashto poems with a valuable essay on Pashto language.

Afghania is another name long considered as a replacement for North-West Frontier Province.[1][2] It was proposed first by the founding leaders of the Muslim League in 1933[2] and was at least partly chosen to represent the first "a" in "Pakistan". The need for a change was explained by the man who named Pakistan in his "Now or Never" pamphlet, Choudhary Rahmat Ali Khan, as:

"'North-West Frontier Province' is semantically non-descript and socially wrongful. It is non-descript because it merely indicates their geographical situation as a province of old 'British India' [which no longer exists]. It is wrongful because it suppresses the social entity of these people. In fact, it suppresses that entity so completely that when composing the name 'Pakistan' for our homelands, I had to call the North-West Frontier Province the Afghan Province."[3]

Other names used or proposed for the province include:

• Pakhtunistan:[4] also used for all lands inhabited by Pashtuns,
• Abasin[4][5] (Urdu: اباسین‎): from the Pashto name for the Indus River,[2]
• Khyber:[2][5] from the Khyber Pass,[2]
• Nuristan[4] (Urdu: نورستان‎): also the name of a province of Afghanistan),
• Gandhara[2] (Urdu: ګندارا‎ Gandḥārā): from the historical kingdom of Gandhara in the region,[2] or
• a combination of these names,[6] or
• others such as Pakhtoonkhwa-Hazara or Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa[2][7] (in reference to the Hazara region where Hindko-speakers are dominant as compared to the Pashto-speakers elsewhere in the province).

Many of these alternatives were designed to avoid or balance the ethnic connotations of Pakhtunkhwa.[2]

For most of the history of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), there were efforts to change its name. As early as 1933, when Afghania was proposed, suggestions for new names came and went. Although some of the names were ethnically neutral, most proposals emphazised the province's Pashtun ethnic identity. The renaming issue was an emotional one which often crossed party lines and not all supporters of a renaming agreed on the name Pakhtunkhwa (some preferred Pashtunistan/Pakhtunistan).

In early 2010, the process of renaming proceeded and the Pakistani Senate confirmed the name change to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 18th amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan with a unanimous 90 votes on 15 April 2010.[15][16] Some Hazara residents said that the new name should be Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa, and others said the name should not be changed since the people were accustomed to North-West Frontier Province.[17]

Arif Nizami, former editor of The Nation, said, "This has actually opened a Pandora's box, because of Pakistan's very tenuous polity. Now, on one side, there are identity issues and ethnic issues and provincial autonomy issues. The other side is religious issues and terrorism. It's a very explosive situation."[17]

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• Pashtunkhwa: A Development Framework