'Hazara-Pakhtoonkhwa'?

The decision to name NWFP as Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa has acted as a catalytic agent unveiling and strengthening the old but hitherto dormant ethnic divides in the province. Whatever name the province is given now, the issue of a separate Hazara province would, henceforth, remain on the agenda.
What is more the assertive Pushtun nationalism will also have to cope with the Seraiki question in Dera Ismail Khan and with the Dardic nationalism in Chitral. Meanwhile the short-sightedness and indecent haste by the ANP, PPP and PML-N to re-christen NWFP without taking into view the ethnic faultlines in the province has put the national consensus on the 18th Amendment in jeopardy.
While one can understand the Pushtun desire for recognition as a separate entity, what their leaders tend to forget is that other ethnic groups living in NWFP, which was carved out of Punjab in 1901, cannot be integrated by force into the numerically larger Pushtun ethnic group. Pushtun claims on the area based on its occupation by Ahmad Shah Abdali out of sync with the times. So are the claims of the majority having the right to decide the fate of the minority. Democracies are increasingly moving from the 19th century concept of majoritarian rule to rule by consensus.
The Hindko speaking belt in NWFP mainly comprises five districts, ie Abbotabad, Haripur, Mansehra, Battagram and Kohistan, which were till 2000 administered as one of the divisions of the province called Hazara, a name still used to indicate the peculiar cultural and linguistic identity of the region.
The highly Hindko is spoken even in predominantly Pushtun districts, also including Peshawar where it is called Khari, ie the language of the city. Hazara borders Punjab, Azad Kashmir and NWFP and has imbibed cultural influences from all the three sides. A number of castes and clans including Utmanzais, Tanolis, Swatis, Tareens, Jadoons, claim Pushtun origins.
There are others that have ties with the clans in adjoining Kashmir like Abbasis and Gujars. Awans are spread all over Punjab and Mughals and Qureshis, all over Pakistan. The one thing common between them all is that an overwhelming majority speaks Hindko and is averse to Pushtun domination. Statistics of language spoken in Abbottabad, the central city of Hazara, in the 1998 census report underline the reality. Hindko is spoken by 94.26 percent population, Punjabi by 2.30 percent, Pushtu by 2.22 percent and Urdu by 1.05 percent.
People of Hazara pride themselves over being more literate and developed than their Pushtu speaking neighbours. According to the 1998 census report, two districts in Hazara topped in literacy rate in the province. Abbottabad with 56.6 percent and Haripur with 53.7 percent leave Kohat with 44.1 percent, Nowshera with 42.50 percent and Peshawar with 41.7 percent trailing far behind. Hazara also has a number of prestigious educational institutions.
Abbottabad in fact boasts the highest number of educational institutions in the country per population or area. Besides the PMA, it has Ayub Medical College, Women Medical College besides two private medical colleges, Army Burn Hall School and College, Abbotabad Public School, Beacon House and a number of other well known chains of schools, two engineering universities, ie COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) and the Abbotabad campus of Peshawar UET.
Hazara University in Mansehra has a campus in Abbotabad also. The Government Postgraduate College offers higher education of Bachelors and Masters level in Literature, Natural Sciences and Exact Sciences. The college attracts students from all over the NWFP. Similarly, the city of Haripur has a government postgraduate college and a college for women, besides numerous other colleges and schools. The district has more medium and big industries than any other district in the NWFP.
Historically, the share of Hazarawals in government jobs has been larger than that of predominantly Pushtun districts. The division has produced one field Marshal and two airforce chiefs, besides numerous servicemen and bureaucrats. With the province being called Pushtunkhwa or "the land of the Pukhtuns" and power passing into the hands of the Pushtuns, they fear being left behind.
This is all the more so on account of the historical rivalry between the Pushtun belt and Hazara division. Hazarawals claim that unlike Pushtun nationalists, they had whole-heartedly supported the Pakistan movement. Pushtun nationalists represented by the Red Shirts or ANP have never been able to strike roots in Hazara.
Soon after the creation of Pakistan, Qayyum Khan, an ethnic Kashmiri whose brother was President of AJK, dominated provincial politics. Qayyum Khan's mantle was claimed after his death first by the PPP and then by PML-N. The argument advanced against Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa is that it has wiped out the identity of the people of Hazara division. Hazarawals maintain they are ethnically, culturally and linguistically different from the Pushtu speaking people.
Among the recent grievances voiced in Hazara is the issue of Tarbela dam. As Gohar Ayub put it last week, thousands of acres of Hazara's fertile land were submerged under the dam. Thus the Rs 22 billion net hydel profits from Tarbela Dam should have been the right of Hazara and spent in the area for uplift works. Q League MNA Sardar Shahjahan Yusuf maintains that when the dam was constructed in 1974, the provincial government gave Hazara only one percent out of Rs 9 billion royalties received under net hydel power profit.
The name Pakhtoonkhwa derives its rationale from the claim that the Pushtuns need a name for their land in conformity with the ethnicity of its population. The demand was naturally bound to send alarming signals to other ethnic groups in NWFP, the biggest one being Hazarawals. Soon after the Constitutional Reforms Committee agreed on Khyber Pushtunkhwa, a wave of unrest overtook the region.
The Q League, which had been ousted from Hazara by the PML-N, tried to fish in the troubled waters. Soon the local leaders of the PML-N and PPP realised the depth of the public sentiment and took a line different from that of their leadership. While the ANP and PPP had decided to change the name of NWFP to Pakhtoonkhwa, the PML-N leadership too failed to comprehend the aspirations of the Hazarawals when it suggested three names to ANP to break the impasse.
None of the names presented by Chaudhry Nisar to Asfandyar Wali reflected the concerns of the people of Hazara division. All the three parties are in a quandary now. Undoing of an amendment passed by the National Assembly in favour of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa could lead to uproar in the Pushtun dominated districts, while the proposal of a division of NWFP could encourage other ethnic groups, seeking the divisions of other provinces.
There is talk now of adopting Hazara-Pakhtoonkhwa instead of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa. This will require a fresh agreement between the ANP, PPP and PML-N and a fresh reformulation of its report by the parliamentary committee for constitutional reforms. The report will have to be put up again before the NA. This would further delay the adoption of the 18th Amendment.
The bungling up of the issue by the ANP, PPP and PML-N has caused the unrest that has rocked the Hazara division for nearly a fortnight now leading to at least seven dead. Democracy offers the best way to resolve issues provided politicians desist from applying pressure tactics, listen to minority views and resolve issue through consensus rather than brute majority. There is a lesson for other provinces, particularly Punjab where demands for Seraiki province are becoming increasingly powerful. Remove the minority's grievances or be prepared for new provinces.