According to the 2017 census of Pakistan, Hindko is spoken by 5 million people in the country.
There is no generic name for the speakers of Hindko because they belong to diverse ethnic groups and tend to identify themselves by the larger families or castes. However, the Hindko-speaking community belonging to the Hazara Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are sometimes recognised collectively as Hazarewal. A portion of Hindko speakers in the Hazara Division claim Pashtun ancestry. Some of those speak Hindko as their mother tongue while others as a second language. These include the Tahirkhelis, Yusufzais, Jadoons and Tareens. The other Hindko speakers include the Sayyids, Awans, Mughals, Malik, Tanolis, Swatis, Turks, Qureshis and Gujjars.
There is also a small diaspora in Afghanistan, which includes members of the Hindu and Sikh community who became established there during the Sikh Empire in the first half of the 19th century. Most of them have emigrated since the rise of the Taliban, and the total population of Sikhs, Hindko-speaking or not, was estimated at 300 families (as of 2018). These Hindko-speaking Hindus and Sikhs are commonly known as Hindki.
Those Hindko speakers, mainly Hindu and Sikhs, who after the partition of India migrated to the independent republic, occasionally identify with the broader Punjabi community; these Hindkowans reside the Indian states of Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir.
Prior to the partition of India, the Hindu and Sikh Hindkowans exercised urban economic power in the North-West Frontier Province of colonial India. They were primarily traders and merchants and over time, settled in areas as far as Kalat, Balochistan.
Origin
The word "Hindko" is a collective label for a diverse group of Lahnda (Western Punjabi) dialects of very different groups, not all of which are even geographically contiguous, spoken by people of various ethnic backgrounds in several areas in Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. The term "Hindko" literally meant "the Indian language" or "language of Hind", but it has developed to denote the Indo-Aryan speech forms spoken in the northern Indian subcontinent, in contrast to the neighbouring Pashto, an Iranic language.
The most common second language for Hindko-speakers in Pakistan is Urdu and the second most common one is Pashto. In most Hindko-speaking areas, speakers of Pashto live in the same or neighboring communities (although this is less true in Abbottabad and Kaghan Valley). The relationship between Hindko and its neighbors is not one of stable bilingualism. In terms of domains of use and number of speakers, Hindko is dominant and growing in the north-east; in Hazara for example, it is displacing Pashto as the language in use among the few Swatis that speak it, and in the Neelam Valley of Azad Jammu & Kashmir, it is gaining ground at the expense of the minority languages like Kashmiri. In the cities of Kohat and Peshawar, on the other hand, it is Hindko that is in a weaker position. With the exodus of the Hindko-speaking Hindus and Sikhs after partition and the consequent influx of Pashtuns into the vacated areas of the urban economy, there have been signs of a shift towards Pashto.
^"Indian" here refers to the historic meaning of India as the northern Indian subcontinent, which was known as Hindustan or Hind.
^Venkatesh, Karthik (6 July 2019). "The strange and little-known case of Hindko". Mint. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 10 October 2019. Also, scholars post-Grierson understood Hindko to mean the "language of the people of Hind, i.e. India" and not the Hindus, which was a term used for a religious community.
^ West, Barbara A. (2010). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. p. 285. ISBN9781438119137. The term Hindko as used in Pakistan refers to speakers of Indo-Aryan languages who live among the primarily Iranian Pashtuns of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The origins of the term refer merely to "Indian speaking" rather than to any particular ethnic group.
^Rensch, Calvin Ross; O'Leary, Clare F.; Hallberg, Calinda E. (1992). Hindko and Gujari. National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University. p. 4. The term Hindki is often used to refer to a speaker of the Hindko language (Shackle 1980: 482), but in popular usage it may refer to the language as well. In older literature it was frequently used for the language--for example, in the Imperial Gazetteer of NWFP, which regularly calls it Hindki (1905: 130, 172, 186 ff.).
^Rensch, Calvin Ross (1992). Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan: Hindko and Gujari. National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University. p. 4. The term Hindki is often used to refer to a speaker of the Hindko language (Shackle 1980: 482), but in popular usage it may refer to the language as well.
^ Masica, Colin P. (1993). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 18–19. ISBN9780521299442. The worst of the latter is "Hindko", a term (basically meaning 'the language of the Indians' – as contrasted with Pathans) applied not only to several forms of "Northern Lahnda" but also to the Siraiki dialects of Dera Ghazi Khan and Mianwali Districts (also called Derawali and Thali respectively), and of Dera Ismail Khan (Northwestern Frontier Province).
^ The rise and development of Urdu and the importance of regional languages in Pakistan. Christian Study Centre. p. 38. Shackle suggests Hindko simply means "Indian language' and describes it as a "collective label for the variety of Indo-Aryan dialects either alongside or in vicinity of Pushto in the northwest of the country'. Hindko is the most significant linguistic minority in the NWFP, represented in nearly one-fifth (18.7%) of the province's total households. ... The Influence of Pushto on Hazara appears to have become more pronounced, due in part to an Influx of Pashtuns replacing the Hindko-speaking Sikhs and Hindus who formerly held key trading positions and who departed at independence.
^ Rensch, Calvin Ross; O'Leary, Clare F.; Hallberg, Calinda E. (1992). Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan: Hindko and Gujari. National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University. pp. 10–11. Members of a variety of ethnic groups speak the language called Hindko. A large number of Hindko speakers in Hazara Division (Mansehra and Abbottabad Districts) are Pashtoons. Some of those speak Hindko as a second language; many others speak it as their mother tongue. These include the Tahir Kheli Pashtoons, who claim to have migrated to the Hazara Division from Afghanistan during the eighteenth century. Many other mother- tongue speakers of Hindko are Swati Pathans, who are said to have formerly spoken Pashto while living in the lower Swat valley. After migrating across the Indus River into Hazara Division, which Ahmed dates around A.D. 1515, the Swatis adopted the Hindko language. There are also Pashtoons belonging to three other groups, the Yusufzai, the Jadun and the Tarin, who have replaced Pashto with Hindko. Many speakers of Hindko belong to groups other than the Pashtoons: Some of these are Saiyids, said to have come to the area in the early centuries of Islamic history, many of whom live in the Peshawar area. Large numbers of Hindko speakers are Avans, particularly in Attock District and Hazara Division. Still, others belong to groups of Mughals, Bulghadris, Turks and Qureshis. In Jammun significant numbers of Gujars have adopted Hindko as their first language.
^"A Precarious State: the Sikh Community in Afghanistan - AIIA". Australian Institute of International Affairs. The origin of the Sikh community in Afghanistan has broadly two streams. There are those who are descendants of converts to the teaching of Guru Nanak –Sikhism's founder – during his trip to Kabul, recorded to be around 1520. These Sikhs are Pashto or Dari speakers, ethnically indigenous to the region, and potentially from groups who did not adopt Islam as the religion became regionally dominant between the 9th and 13th centuries. The second stream derive from the short-lived Sikh Empire (1799–1849) as it pushed westward, gaining control of territory to the Khyber Pass and Sikh merchants established trading routes into Kandahar and Kabul. This group speak Hindko, a dialect of Punjabi that is mostly found around Peshawar, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in north-west Pakistan.
^"A Precarious State: the Sikh Community in Afghanistan - AIIA". Australian Institute of International Affairs. The attack highlighted the current precarious state of the Sikh community in Afghanistan, with dwindling numbers that may soon end the religion's 500-year presence in the country. Current estimates put the Sikh community at around 300 families, with only two gurdwaras (Sikh temples) remaining operational in the country: one in Kabul, and another in Jalalabad. A decade ago the numbers were placed at around 3000 adherents. Yet before the Taliban's ascendance in the mid-1990s, there was a thriving community of around 50,000 people. Documents sighted by Professor Harjot Oberoi of the University of British Columbia indicated that in the 1940s the Sikh community was potentially as large as 200,000.
^Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). "Hindki". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. HINDKI, the name given to the Hindus who inhabit Afghanistan.
^Bellew, H. W. (8 May 2022). Journal of a Political Mission to Afghanistan in 1857. BoD – Books on Demand. p. 18. ISBN978-3-375-01648-7. The next principal races inhabiting Afghanistan are the Hindki and Jat. The Hindki people are Hindus of the Kshatrī, or military caste. They are wholly occupied in trade, and form an important and numerous portion of the population of all cities and towns, and are also to be found in the majority of the larger villages.
^ Venkatesh, Karthik (6 July 2019). "The strange and little-known case of Hindko". Mint. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 24 September 2019. In India, Hindko is little known, and while there are Hindko speakers in parts of Jammu and Kashmir as well as among other communities who migrated to India post-Partition, by and large it has been absorbed under the broad umbrella of Punjabi.
^ Sardar, Ziauddin; Yassin-Kassab, Robin (2012). Pakistan?. Oxford University Press. p. 71. ISBN9781849042239. Peshawar, the oldest living city in South Asia, has developed in four phases that correspond to the city's major settlements. The inner city – ander shehr – has been inhabited constantly since at least 539 BCE. People here mostly speak Hindko, which, after Pashto is the region's most widely spoken language -- a language that also attests to the city's Indo-Aryan origin. Hindko-speakers from the inner city have supplied some of Bollywood's most celebrated screen talent. Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Vinod Khanna were all born here. The whole Kapoor family, which has a long history in Bollywood cinema, traces its origins to the inner city. Peshawar also gave India one of its greatest English language novelists in Mulk Raj Anand.
^ "Pakistan's regional languages face extinction". The National. 7 January 2017. Retrieved 4 September 2020. Instead they are exchanging anecdotes and ideas in their native Hindko—literally, "the language of India" – at a conference organized to promote the increasingly marginalised language. It is one of 72 tongues, including the official languages Urdu and English, spoken by Pakistan's 200 million people, according to a 2014 parliamentary paper that classed 10 as either "in trouble" or "near extinction". According to scholars, Hindko's decline as the foremost language of Peshawar city began in 1947 when Hindu and Sikh traders left after the partition of British India.
^Papers in language and linguistics, Volume 1. Bahri Publications. 1986. p. 50. Essentially, what has occurred is an occupation by Pashto-speaking Pathans of key areas in the urban economy of the province which before 1947 were traditionally exercised by Hindko- speaking Hindus and Sikhs.
^Language forum, Volume 9. Bahri Publications. 1984. p. 50. Essentially, what has occurred is an occupation by Pashto-speaking Pathans of key areas in the urban economy of the province which before 1947 were traditionally exercised by Hindko- speaking Hindus and Sikhs.
^Journal of Asian history, Volumes 35-36. O. Harrassowitz. 2001. The real opposition to Pashto came, however, from the speakers of Hindko. A large number of Sikhs and Hindus, all speaking Hindko, lived in the cities of N.W.F.P. and had a voice in the legislative assembly, this was often perceived as the non-Muslim opposition to Pashto.
^Language, ideology and power: language learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India. Oxford University Press. 2002. p. 367. The real opposition to Pashto came, however, from the speakers of Hindko. A large number of Sikhs and Hindus, all speaking Hindko, lived in the cities of N.W.F.P. and had a voice in the legislative assembly, this was often perceived as the non-Muslim opposition to Pashto.
^The social organization of the Marri Baluch. Indus Publications. 1966. p. 11. ...is in the hands of a small caste of Hindu merchants. These Hindus are Hindko-speaking and regard Kalat as their homeland, where they generally keep their families and go for some months every year to visit and to obtain supplies. While in the Marri area, they must be under the protection of a local Marri chief or the Sardar himself.
^Viking fund publications in anthropology, Issue 43. Viking Fund. 1966. p. 11. ...is in the hands of a small caste of Hindu merchants. These Hindus are Hindko-speaking and regard Kalat as their homeland, where they generally keep their families and go for some months every year to visit and to obtain supplies. While in the Marri area, they must be under the protection of a local Marri chief or the sardar himself.
^For the heterogeneity of the dialects, see Rensch (1992, p. 53); Masica (1991, pp. 18–19); Shackle (1980, p. 482): the term Hindko is a "collective label" which "embraces dialects of very different groups, not all of which are even geographically contiguous.". For the ethnic diversity, see Rensch (1992, pp. 10–11)
^Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (27 March 2008). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-139-46550-2.
^ Venkatesh, Karthik (6 July 2019). "The strange and little-known case of Hindko". Mint. Archived from the original on 30 June 2022. Retrieved 10 October 2019. Also, scholars post-Grierson understood Hindko to mean the "language of the people of Hind, i.e. India" and not the Hindus, which was a term used for a religious community.
^ Sumra, Mahar Abdul Haq (1992). The Soomras. Beacon Books. p. 36. The India of the ancient times extended from the Hindukush (Hindu meaning Indian, Kush meaning Koh or a mountain)... Apart from the names of places and streams there are many other words also which have 'Hind' as their adjectival parts. ... Hindko (the language of Peshawar and Abbotabad), Hindwana (water-melon), Indi maran (a wrestling skill), Hindvi (language other than Persian and Arabic spoken or written by locals) etc.
^Christophe Jaffrelot (2004). A History of Pakistan and Its Origins. Anthem Press. ISBN9781843311492. Hindko could mean 'Indian language' as opposed to Pashto, which belongs to the Iranian group.
^C. Shackle (1980). "Hindko in Kohat and Peshawar". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 43 (3): 482–510. doi:10.1017/s0041977x00137401. JSTOR615737. S2CID129436200. Grierson took 'Hindko' to mean 'the language of Hindus'
^Salman, Rashid (8 October 2020). From Landi Kotal to Wagah: Cultural heritage along the Grand Trunk Road. UNESCO Publishing. p. 26. ISBN978-92-3-100387-5.
^The rise and development of Urdu and the importance of regional languages in Pakistan. Christian Study Centre. p. 38. Shackle suggests Hindko simply means "Indian language" and describes it as a "collective label for the variety of Indo-Aryan dialects either alongside or in the vicinity of Pushto in the northwest of the country". Hindko is the most significant linguistic minority in the NWFP, represented in nearly one-fifth (18.7%) of the province's total households. ... The Influence of Pushto on Hazara appears to have become more pronounced, due in part to an influx of Pashtuns replacing the Hindko-speaking Sikhs and Hindus who formerly held key trading positions and who departed at independence.
Rensch, Calvin R. (1992). "The Language Environment of Hindko-Speaking People". In O'Leary, Clare F.; Rensch, Calvin R.; Hallberg, Calinda E. (eds.). Hindko and Gujari. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN969-8023-13-5.
Akhtar, Raja Nasim; Rehman, Khawaja A. (2007). "The Languages of the Neelam Valley". Kashmir Journal of Language Research. 10 (1): 65–84. ISSN1028-6640.
Shackle, Christopher (1983). "Language, Dialect and Local Identity in Northern Pakistan". In Wolfgang-Peter Zingel; Stephanie Zingel-Avé Lallemant (eds.). Pakistan in Its Fourth Decade: Current Political, Social and Economic Situation and Prospects for the 1980s. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Orient-Instituts. Vol. 23. Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut. pp. 175–87.
