NWFP name controversy

It is shocking to note that while making a case in favour of Pukhtunkhwa, some chauvinist elements in NWFP are trying, though needlessly, to undermine the importance of unprivileged languages of the province.
Hell-bent on going ahead with plot to have the NWFP renamed as Pukhtunkhwa, a bunch of narrow-minded people are passing judgement on the status of Hindko, Seraiki, Khowar and Kohistani languages just to give the impression that Pashto is the only dominant language in NWFP. Pashto is a major language, but not the mother tongue of the overwhelming majority of the province as being portrayed wrongly by proponents of the Pukhtunkhwa.
It is highly unfortunate that whenever the supporters of the Pukhtunkhwa raise the demand for the renaming of the province according to their wishes, they simultaneously start belittling other languages and cultures. The opponents of the Pukhtunkhwa strongly believe, and quite rightly, that renaming of the NWFP to Pukhtunkhwa is a step for establishing the hegemony of the Pakhtuns over other oppressed nationalities of the province, who have their own distinct languages and cultures.
The onslaught against unprivileged languages and cultures being unleashed by the Pukhtunkhwa proponents after the recent renaming move has again strengthened that belief.
Of late, the Pukhtunkhwa proponents have been claiming that Hindko is not the majority language in Hazara region and Kohat; Khowar is not the main language of Chitral, Seraiki is not a significant language in the southern belt and that Kohistani is not largely spoken in Kohistan district. The claim is nothing but a travesty of truth.
I will not comment on the status of Hindko in Hazara; that of Seraiki in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank, Khowar in Chitral and Kohistani language in the Kohistan as the matter should be better explained by the people of these respective areas. However, being a Kohati, I would like to tell the Pukhtunkhwa supporters that Hindko is the most widely spoken language in Kohat district.
It is spoken not only in the urban region of Kohat, but several other areas such as Bili Tang, Togh Bala, Karmatu, Gambet, Ghandyaali, Sur Gul, Khushal Gharh, Chormuki, Jiber, Kapri Sheikhan and so on. The Hindko-language speakers' percentage used to be comparatively less in the past when Hangu was part of Kohat but after the upgrading of Hangu to a full-fledged district, Hindko is now the majority language of the district.
The Pukhtunkhwa zealots also claim that 74 percent of the NWFP population speaks Pashto language and hence the province should be renamed after the Pukhtuns. But unfortunately, they base their utterances on the 1998 Population Census report that is a highly flawed document as far as our province is concerned in that it has no information on the speakers of 28 languages of NWFP. Can such a document be trusted according to which there is not a single speaker of Hindko in the province?
Let me remind the Pukhtunkhwa proponents that 30 languages are spoken in NWFP, not one or two. The importance of unprivileged languages cannot be dismissed by putting them in the "waghera waghera" (etc) column in the census forms. If Pukhtuns are really in a majority in the NWFP, as the Pukhtunkhwa proponents frequently claim, then why they have been opposing introduction of columns for other languages of NWFP in the census forms for the last 40 years. Let us introduce columns for all the languages of NWFP in the next census forms and see who is in real majority.