Keeping it alive: Conference calls for promotion of Hindko

Speakers say the language should be compulsory in schools.


Our Correspondent December 21, 2014

HARIPUR: The responsibility of promoting the Hindko language lies greatly with mothers and educational institutes, said speakers at a Hindko conference held in Haripur on Sunday.

The event was arranged jointly by Gandhara Hindko Board and Anjuman-e-Taraqi Pasand Musanifeen Haripur (an association of progressive writers). A large number of lawyers, civil society activists, academia members and poets attended the conference.

‘Rich history’

Like other languages spoken across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Hindko has a rich history too, said Gandhara Hindko Board General Secretary Ziauddin while addressing the gathering.



“Around 80% of the people who died on April 23 in 1930 when British troops opened fire at a protest in Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar were Hindo-speaking but history has remained silent about their sacrifice for Pakistan,” said Zia.

He added Hindkowans–people who speak Hindko–have made remarkable contributions to the creation of Pakistan.

According to Zia, many of the schoolchildren who died in the December 16 massacre at Army Public School in Peshawar belonged to Hindko-speaking families. The general secretary also attributed the Hazara region’s demand for a separate province to “discrimination meted out to Hindko speakers on ethnic grounds.”

“Although Hindko is the sixth-most spoken language in the country and the second most spoken in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, it has been neglected to such an extent that in the last six censuses it was listed in the column of other languages,” said Zia. In reality, Hindko is the mother tongue of more than 8 million people in K-P alone, he added.

Expressing disappointment over the disinterest in the promotion of Hindko, Zia stressed on the need to launch Hindko academies and Hindko departments at universities to preserve it.

Speaking about the Gandhara Hindko Board’s efforts for the language, Zia said the association has published a dictionary as well as 52 books, including the Holy Quran in Hindko. He added over 80 books of history, poetry and fiction were in the process of being published.

Feeling left out

In his address, Professor Yahya Khalid, a known poet and writer, said 52% of K-P’s population speaks Hindko but it remains unrecognised and is getting unpopular because mothers avoid speaking to their children in the language and stress on Urdu and English.

Khalid also blamed political leaders from Hindko-speaking communities for not doing enough to promote it.

K-P Bar Council member Malik Khaliq Dad Advocate said the government must make it a compulsory subject at the school level, while MPhil and PhDs in Hindko should be also initiated in at least Peshawar, DI Khan and Hazara universities.

Quoting the example of local languages in other countries, former provincial minister and PTI leader Yousuf Ayub Khan said, “In Germany and China people prefer to speak their own languages rather than English.”

Although Urdu and English are essential languages to learn, early education and home communication should be in the mother tongue, said Khan, adding the government will support the promotion of the language.

During the second part of the conference, several Hindko poets narrated their work.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2014.

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