Names of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (, ) has been known by a number of names throughout its history. In addition to North-West Frontier Province, the official name by which it was known from 1901 to 2010, until it was renamed. Other names used or proposed for the province include Gandhara, Afghania, Pashtunistan, Pathanistan, Sarhad, Abaseen, Khyber, or a combination of names, such as Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa.

North-West Frontier Province

For over a hundred years after its founding as a province of British Raj in 1901, it was known as the North-West Frontier Province (abbreviated as NWFP) until 2010 due to its relative location being in the northwest of the nation. Unofficially, it was known as Sarhad (), derived from the province's Urdu name, which means "frontier".

Efforts to change the name
For most of the history of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), there were efforts to change its name. The name Afghania was proposed first by the founding leaders of the Muslim League in 1933 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:

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.

20th-century efforts
By the late 20th century, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq agreed with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to change the name to Pashtunistan but he contended that the term Pashtunistan had become controversial and was being politicized by Afghanistan. Ghaffar Khan suggested Pakhtunkhwa, but Zia-ul-Haq asked Ghaffar Khan to suggest an alternative.

The name Pakhtunkhwa was approved by the democratically elected constitutional assembly of the province in 1997 by majority vote. However, the PML (N) parliamentary party of NWFP rejected the ANP demand but called for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to suggest another "non-controversial" name. PML (N) members noted that Sarhad was a good name for the province but, if a change was needed, then it should be named Khyber or Abasin. The NWFP chief minister, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan, called for a referendum on the issue as a way of determining the name. These offers were rejected by the ANP leadership and the ANP withdrew from both the federal and provincial governments.

21st-century efforts
The lack of support for a name change by the PML (N) was defended as opposition to the nationalistic politics being pursued by the ANP.

In May 2008, to accommodate a demand by the people of NWFP who voted for the ANP, the PPP proposed that the name of the North-West Frontier Province be changed to Pakhtunkhwa, however the Muslim League Nawaz which had considerable support in the Hindko-speaking Hazara region of the province announced it might oppose the name change because of it "being on ethnic grounds" because of opposition by its provincial leadership, yet the party fails to explain the fact that the names of the other three provinces (Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan) represent the ethnic identity of their majority populace, despite how they camouflage that fact with their version of the history of those provinces.

The name Pakhtunkhwa was mentioned for the first time in the United Nation's General Assembly by Pakistani President Asif Zardari on 26 September 2008.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa means the "Khyber side of the land of the Pashtuns," where the word Pakhtunkhwa means "Land of the Pashtuns", while according to some scholars, it refers to "Pashtun culture and society".

The Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party based in the province demanded that the province name be changed to "Pakhtunkhwa". Their logic behind that demand was that Punjabi people, Sindhi people and Baloch people have their provinces named after their ethnicities but that is not the case for Pashtun people.

Pakistan Muslim League (N), the largest opposition party at the time was ready to change the province's name by supporting the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and ANP, in a constitutional amendment but wanted to name the province something other than which does not carry only the Pashtun identity in it as they argued that there were other minor communities living in the province especially the Hazarewals of the Hazara region who spoke Hindko thus the word Khyber was introduced with the name because it is the name of a major pass which connects Pakistan to Afghanistan.

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.

Renaming controversy

The name change of the province was met with strong opposition from the people of Hazara region and protests erupted in the region with wheel and shutter jam strikes. Abbottabad became the nerve center of the movement. On the 10th of April, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police fired at unarmed protesters, leaving 7 dead and dozens injured. Allegedly, the firing was ordered by the coalition government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, led by the Awami National Party. This is one of the earliest incidents of police brutality in Pakistan in recent years, occurring before the Model Town Lahore incident, whose FIR has not been registered still today. 

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."

Alternative proposed names 
Many alternative names were proposed for the province. Many of these alternatives were designed to avoid or balance the ethnic connotations of Pakhtunkhwa.

Gandhara 

The name Gandhāra was proposed by Pakistan Muslim League (N), as a neutral name for the province. Gandhara was an ancient Indo-Aryan civilization centered in the present-day province. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar valley and Swat valley, though the cultural influence of "Greater Gandhara" extended across the Indus river to the Taxila region in Potohar Plateau and westwards into the Kabul valley in Afghanistan, and northwards up to the Karakoram range.

It was attested in the Rigveda, and it was one of the 16 Mahajanapadas of the second urbanisation.  The region was a major centre for Greco-Buddhism under the Indo-Greeks and Gandharan Buddhism under later dynasties, including Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans. Gandhara was also a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and East Asia.

Gāndhārī, an Indo-Aryan language written in Kharosthi script, acted as lingua franca of the region. Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art which is influenced by the classical Hellenistic styles, Gandhara attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, who had their capital at Peshawar (Puruṣapura).

Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa 
Some Hazara residents said that the new name should be Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa (in reference to the Hazara region where Hindko-speakers are dominant as compared to the Pashto-speakers elsewhere in the province), and others said the name should not be changed since the people were accustomed to North-West Frontier Province.

Other names 
 Abaseen (): from the Pashto name for the Indus River.
 Khyber: from the Khyber Pass.

See also
 Pashto
 Pashtun people
 Pashtun diaspora
 Pashtun culture

 Pashtunistan

Notes

References

External links
 Pashtunkhwa: A Development Framework 

History of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Political history of Pakistan
Geographic history of Pakistan
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Provincial disputes in Pakistan
 
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Pashto words and phrases