Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, commonly abbreviated KP or KPK and formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, is a province of Pakistan. Located in the northwestern region of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the fourth largest province of Pakistan by land area and the third-largest province by population. It is bordered by Balochistan to the south; Punjab, Islamabad Capital Territory, and Azad Kashmir to the east; and Gilgit-Baltistan to the north and northeast. It shares an international border with Afghanistan to the west. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a varied geography of rugged mountain ranges, valleys, rolling foothills, and dense agricultural farms.
The history of the present province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is characterized by frequent invasions by various empires, largely due to its geographical proximity to the historically important Khyber Pass. It was the site of the ancient Gandhara, and was historically a stronghold of Buddhism. Islam became dominant in the region after the 11th-century conquest of the Hindu Shahi kingdom by the Ghaznavids. The predecessor of the present province was constituted in 1901, under the British Raj, when the North-West Frontier Province was created by bifurcating the northwestern districts of the erstwhile Punjab Province.
Although it is colloquially known by a variety of other names, the name "Khyber Pakhtunkhwa" was brought into effect for the North-West Frontier Province in April 2010, following the enactment of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. On 24 May 2018, the National Assembly of Pakistan voted in favour of the 25th Constitutional Amendment, which merged the FATA as well as the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
While it is the third-largest Pakistani province in terms of both its population and its economy, it is geographically the smallest. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's share of Pakistan's GDP has historically comprised 10.5%, amounting to over US$ 30 billion. The population of the province forms 16.9% of Pakistan's total population and is multiethnic, with the main ethnic groups being the Pashtuns, Hindkowans, Saraikis, and Chitralis, among others.
Etymology
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 province has had various names throughout history. 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.When the British established it as a province, they called it "North West Frontier Province" due to its relative location being in the northwest of the British Indian Empire. After the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan continued with this name but a Pashtun political party, 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, 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 which does not carry an exclusively 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.
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 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 given to it by the Mughals, which means "frontier".For most of the history of the North-West Frontier Province, 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 emphasised 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 proposals
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 parliamentary party of NWFP rejected the ANP demand but called for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to suggest another "non-controversial" name. PML 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 proposals
The lack of support for a name change by the PML 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.
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
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, 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 10 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 were designed to avoid or balance the ethnic connotations of Pakhtunkhwa.Gandhara
The name Gandhāra was proposed by Pakistan Muslim League, 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.