Is Pakhtunkhwa a proper name or what?
Monday, April 05, 2010
By Behroz Khan
Unlike the popular quote of William Shakespeare, there is a lot in the name when it comes to politics. The controversy is over the name of a region inhabited by a race which is rich culturally, politically, historically and with an abundance of resources. The fight is for the rights of Pakhtuns and giving them a name reflecting their identity within the federation of Pakistan.
The debate on naming NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa, or the proposed name for the federating unit as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is taking the issue to new heights. Pakhtun intellectuals, nationalists and academicians are searching books and coming up with historical evidences to prove that the region was always referred to as Pakhtunkhwa till the point the British India carved out a new province from then Punjab and named it as NWFP in 1901. Leave alone the Pakhtun rulers like Ahmad Shah Abdali, Mir Wais Neka or the poet-cum-warrior Khushal Khan Khattak and the mystic poet Rehman Baba, foreign writers too have mentioned in their books and documents that the area was called as Pakhtunkhwa. For example, Notes on Afghanistan & Balochistan by Henry George 1888, Asiatic Research Vol-9 by Ledin 1812, A Chrestomathy of Pashto by Bernard Dorn 1847, Pashto Grammar by Dr Henry Walter 1867 and Necklace of Pakhtunkhwa by James Dermstater 1886 are the few references to name.
Now former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is in the heat of the debate. He has raised objection to the name on the basis of reservations expressed by his party workers from Hazara Division, which is almost equally divided by Hindko and Pashto speaking population even if we ignore the reality that Pashto speaking population can outnumber the rest for sure. According to the 1998 national census, two out of the five districts of Hazara, namely Mansehra and Battagram are predominantly Pashto speaking areas, while Kohistan is inhabited by Kohistanis and their second language is Pashto. Hindko speaking Pakhtuns are again in majority in the rest of the two districts i.e. Abbottabad and Haripur, so how can Nawaz Sharif put weight behind his party stalwart from Abbottabad, Mahtab Ahmad Khan Abbasi or his son-in-law, Capt (R) Safdar by overlooking the fact that such a move on his part could damage no other but the PML-N alone. The other opposing party is PML-Q giving approval to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa with a note of dissent.
However, the PML-N is going to lose support because it objected to the name on behalf of leaguers from Hazara, who wanted to add the word Abaseen with Pakhtunkhwa and not Khyber. Another connotation is that ANP has lost nothing by accepting Khyber as a prefix to Pakhtunkhwa, though the party is struggling to win a name, which is one word, whether it is Pakhtunkhwa, Pakhtunistan or Afghania.
A 1997 resolution passed by the Frontier Assembly with majority vote approved the name of Pakhtunkhwa for the province. The issue was raised by late Bacha Khan with late General Ziaul Haq, who had offered to give a name to the nameless province, but later on Zia did not accept any of these three names, which compelled Bacha Khan to abandon negotiations with then martial law administrator. Bacha Khan also advocated that Punjab has annexed four districts of Pakhtunkhwa namely, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Campbellpur, which was later on named Attock, and Mianwali. In one of his 1987 speeches in Karachi, Bacha Khan offered a solution by giving Jhelum and Rawalpindi to Punjab, saying that Punjabis are presently in majority in these two districts and demanded return of Mianwali and Attock on the basis that Pakhtuns are still in majority there.
However, Bacha Khan’s son, Khan Abdul Wali Khan did not press for the return of the two districts but kept the issue alive by demanding a name for the province to dump the legacy of the British era. He could not succeed. The war of nerves and patience continued till March 31, 2010 when all the parties having representation in the sitting parliament finally agreed to the demand of Asfandyar Wali Khan to propose Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as the new name for NWFP in the historical constitutional package awaiting approval from the National Assembly and the Senate.
The prefix of Khyber is likely to give another opportunity to ANP and other Pakhtun nationalist parties to press for the completion of the incomplete agenda to unite the divided Pakhtuns. The longstanding demand of the ANP together with Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) of Mehmud Khan Achakzai is that Pakhtuns living in Fata and Balochistan be made one unit and the new name can give a justification and clue to that direction. The Pakhtuns living in Balochistan always referred to the Pakhtunland in that province as southern Pakhtunkhwa and the people of Fata call themselves as Pakhtuns from central Pakhtunkhwa. The addition of Khyber also technically gives an edge to the nationalist parties to demand merger of Fata with the province because Khyber will become part of the province with the new name by the constitution.
Administration of Fata is a federal subject. If Nawaz Sharif and others have agreed to give a name to the province, Pakhtunkhwa is the proper name and any prefix or suffix to it will bring no rewards to him but could backfire.
Apart from the name, the impending 18th amendment in the constitution will enable provinces to get control of their resources with the repeal of the concurrent list and strengthen democratic dispensation for the first time when an elected president has agreed to empower the Parliament. No one expected that President Asif Ali Zardari would even share powers with the prime minister, rather than surrendering his authority.
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