Punjab (Pakistan)
Punjab
پنجاب | |
|---|---|
      Clockwise from top left: Badshahi Mosque, Noor Mahal, Alamgiri Gate, Naulakha Pavilion, Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam and Derawar Fort | |
 Seal | |
.svg) Location of Punjab in Pakistan | |
| Coordinates: 31°N 72°E / 31°N 72°E | |
| Country |  Pakistan |
| Established | 1 July 1970 |
| Capital and largest city | Lahore |
| Government | |
| • Type | Self-governing Province subject to the Federal Government |
| • Governor | Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar |
| • Chief Minister | Sardar Usman Buzdar |
| • Chief Secretary | Yousaf Naseem Khokhar (PAS) |
| • Legislature | Provincial Assembly |
| • High Court | Lahore High Court |
| Area | |
| • Total | 205,344 km2 (79,284 sq mi) |
| Population (2017) | |
| • Total | 110,012,442[1] |
| Time zone | UTC+5 (PST) |
| ISO 3166 code | PK-PB |
| Main Language(s) | |
| Notable sports teams | Lahore Qalandars Multan Sultans Lahore Lions Rawalpindi Rams Sialkot Stallions Bahawalpur Stags Multan Tigers Faisalabad Wolves |
| Seats in National Assembly | 183 |
| HDI (2017) | 0.732[2] |
| Seats in Provincial Assembly | 371[3] |
| Divisions | 10 |
| Districts | 36 |
| Tehsils | 146 |
| Union Councils | 7602 |
| Website | www |
Punjab (Punjabi: صوبہ پنجاب) is a province in Pakistan. The capital of Punjab is Lahore. Punjab has a population of about 120 million people and an area of 79,284 mi² or (205,344 km²). The province of Punjab is greater in area than Kyrgyzstan but smaller than Belarus.
Etymology
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The term "Punjab" came into currency during the reign of Akbar in the late sixteenth century.[4][5][6] Though the name Punjab is of Persian origin. The Persian word Punjab is a combination of the Indo-Iranian words panj (five) and āb (water), and thus the (land of) five rivers. The five rivers are the Indus River, Chenab River, Jhelum River, Ravi River and the Sutlej River. Sometimes, in English, there can be a definite article before the name i.e. the Punjab. The name is also sometimes spelled as Panjab or Panjaab or Punjaab. The name Punjab was given to the region by Turkic Muslim conquerors and popularized during the reign of the Islamic Mughal Empire in the 17th century CE respectively. The Punjab is often referred to as the Breadbasket in both Pakistan and NW India, with its two parts (پنج, panj, 'five' and آب, āb, 'water') being cognates of the Sanskrit words पञ्च, pañca, 'five' and अप्, áp, 'water', of the same meaning.[7][8] The word pañjāb is thus calque of Indo-Aryan pañca-áp and means "The Land of Five Waters", referring to the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas.[9] All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Sutlej being the largest. References to a land of five rivers may be found in the Mahabharata, in which one of the regions is named as Panchanada (Sanskrit: पञ्चनद, romanized: pañca-nada, lit. 'five rivers').[10][11] Earlier, the Punjab was known as Sapta Sindhu or Hapta Hendu in Avesta, translating into "The Land of Seven Rivers", with the other two being Indus and Kabul rivers which are included in the greater Punjab region.[12][a] The Ancient Greeks (Greek people) referred to the region as Pentapotamía (Greek: Πενταποταμία),[14][15][16] which has the same meaning as the Persian word. *ab- was also water in Proto-Celtic carried forward to the common British river name Avon.
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History
[change | change source]Before 1947 both Pakistan and the Republic of India were ruled by the British. The Punjab province used to be a part of British Punjab. On the 3rd of June in 1947/Mountbatten Plan was announced which required both the Punjab and Bengal provincial assemblies to vote on whether they wanted to keep their provinces United or Partitioned in favour of Independence. Both Provincial Assemblies voted in favour of partitioning their provinces respectively Muslim majority voted yes, Sikh minority voted yes, Hindu minority voted no to formal Partition thereon. However the United Punjab Assembly which was elected in 1946 was divided into two sovereign parts. One was West Punjab Assembly within Pakistan and the other was East Punjab Assembly within India to decide whether or not the province of Punjab be partitioned. After voting on both sides, Partition and Independence was decided thereafter. The British province of Punjab was split between Pakistan and Bharat via the Radcliffe Line and the Ferozpur District and the sub-district of Gurdaspur awards were originally meant to go to the Pakistanis, however it was decided on August 18th to allocate them to East Punjab. Today India has a state called Punjab since 1966. A bus service was launched in 2006 connecting Lahore in Pakistani Punjab with Amritsar in the Republic of India, through the Wagah International border. This was the first bus service between the two Punjabs for almost 60 years.[17] On the 28th of November in 2018, Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, inaugurated the construction of the Kartarpur Corridor. The corridor is a border crossing that will connect two important Sikh shrines – Dera Baba Nanak Sahib in India and Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan – and provide access for Sikh pilgrims from Indian Punjab to Pakistani Punjab. The opening of a religious corridor in Punjab is being described by some as a means of expanding religious, cultural and intellectual exchanges. The future of the corridor and its potential impact on India-Pakistan relations is contingent upon whether the two states will be able to develop sustained channels through which to discuss, firstly, the modalities of religious travel, and, secondly, the expansion of such linkages to other sectors such as trade and commerce.
Overview
[change | change source]Wagah, named Wahga in Pakistan, is a village through which the controversial Radcliffe Line, the boundary dividing the Indian Punjab from Pakistani Punjab upon the Partition of India, was drawn.[18] The village was divided by independence in 1947. Today, the eastern half of the village remains in the Republic of India while the western half is in Pakistan.
It is particularly known for the elaborate Wagah border ceremony that happens at the International border gate before 5PM each day.[18]
Punjab industrialized rapidly beginning in the 1950s. New factories were established in Lahore, Multan, Sialkot and Wah. In the 1960s the new city of Islamabad was built near Rawalpindi.
Agriculture continues to be the largest sector of Punjab's economy. The province is the breadbasket of the country as well as home to the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, the Punjabis. Unlike in neighbouring India, there was no large-scale redistribution of agricultural land. As a result, most rural areas are dominated by a small set of feudalistic Zamindar, the land-owning families.
In the 1950s there was tension between the eastern and western halves of Pakistan. In order to address the situation, a new formula resulted in the abolition of the province status for Punjab in 1955. It was merged into a single province West Pakistan. In 1972, after East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh, Punjab again became a province.
Punjab witnessed major battles between the armies of India and Pakistan in the wars of 1965 and 1971. Since the 1990s Punjab hosted several key sites of Pakistan's nuclear program such as Kahuta. It also hosts major military bases such as at Sargodha and Rawalpindi. The peace process between India and Pakistan, which began in earnest in 2004, has helped pacify the situation. Trade and people-to-people contacts through the Wagah border are now starting to become common. Indian Sikh pilgrims visit holy sites such as Nankana Sahib.
Starting in the 1980s, large numbers of Punjabis migrated to the Middle East, Britain, Spain, Canada and the United States for economic opportunities, forming the large Punjabi diaspora. Business and cultural ties between the United States and Punjab are growing.
About 120 million people live in Punjab, just over half of Pakistan's population of 225 million.
Geography
[change | change source]Punjab is Pakistan's second largest province at 205,344 km2 (79,284 sq mi) after Balochistan and is located at the northwestern edge of the geologic Indian plate in South-central Asia. The capital and largest city is Lahore which was the historical capital of the wider Punjab region. Other important district cities include Multan, Faisalabad, Sheikhupura, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Jhelum and Rawalpindi. Undivided Punjab is home to six rivers, of which five flow through Pakistani Punjab. From west to east, these are: the Indus, Jhelum, Beas, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej. Nearly 60% of Pakistan's population lives in the Punjab. It is the nation's only province that touches every other province; it also surrounds the federal enclave of the national capital city at Islamabad.This geographical position and a large multi-ethnic population strongly influence Punjab's outlook on National affairs and induces in Punjab a keen awareness of the problems of the Pakistan's other important provinces and territories. In the acronym P-A-K-I-S-T-A-N, the P is for PUNJAB.
The province is a mainly a fertile region along the river valleys, while sparse deserts can be found near the border with Rajasthan and the Sulaiman Range. The region contains the Thar and Cholistan deserts. The Indus River and its many tributaries traverse the Punjab from north to south.
The landscape is amongst the most heavily irrigated on earth and canals can be found throughout the province. Weather extremes are notable from the hot and barren south to the cool hills of the north. The foothills of the Himalayas are found in the extreme north as well.
| Provincial flag | Flag of Punjab | |
|---|---|---|
| Provincial seal | Emblem of Punjab | |
| Provincial animal | Punjab urial[19] |  |
| Provincial bird | Blue peafowl[19] |  |
| Provincial tree | Indian rosewood[19] |  |
| Provincial flower | Sadabahar[19] |  |
| Provincial staple | Wheat |  |
| Provincial crop | Sugarcane |  |
| Provincial fruit | Oranges | .jpg){kind=small} |
| Provincial dish | Nihari |  |
| Provincial dance | Punjabi dance |  |
| Provincial instrument | Punjabi Dhol |  |
| Provincial sport | Kushti |  |
Religion
[change | change source]According to the census done in 2017, nearly 110.5 million people lived in Punjab. About 108 million said they were Muslim. Most of these are Sunni, of the Hanafi school. A minority are Shi'a. The largest non-Muslim minority are Christians, with about 2.1 million people. Most Pakistani Christians live in Punjab. Lahore and Faisalabad have more Christian population than any other cities in Punjab. Most Punjabi Christians are converts from the Hindu Churas and Mazhabi Sikh caste to Christianity during the British Raj in colonial India.[20] Many Christians in Punjab are persecuted.[21] The high-profile Asia Bibi blasphemy case was a famous example of this. Bibi was arrested in Punjab in 2009 under the blasphemy law in Pakistan, found guilty and sentenced to execution.[22][23] After ten years in prison, and an international campaign, she was acquitted and she and her family moved to Canada, then on to France. The governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated for his defence of Bibi.[24]
There have been cases where people were forced to convert from one religion to Islam. In Pakistan, this mostly applied to the minority religions Hinduism, Christianity, and Sikhism. There are reports that people from these communities are often kidnapped, and forced to convert to Islam. People estimate that there are several hundred cases per year.[25][26]
Districts of Punjab (Pakistan)
[change | change source]Related pages
[change | change source]References
[change | change source]- ↑ 2017 Census Archived 15 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "Punjab leads in Human Development Index".
- ↑ "Provincial Assembly – Punjab". Archived from the original on 1 February 2009. Retrieved 7 January 2020.
- ↑ Cite error: The named reference
:2was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page). - ↑ Cite error: The named reference
Gandhi 2013was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page). - ↑ Cite error: The named reference
:1was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page). - ↑ H K Manmohan Siṅgh. "The Punjab". The Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Editor-in-Chief Harbans Singh. Punjabi University, Patiala. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
- ↑ Gandhi, Rajmohan (2013). Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten. New Delhi, India, Urbana, Illinois: Aleph Book Company. p. 1 ("Introduction"). ISBN 978-93-83064-41-0.
- ↑ "Punjab." Pp. 107 in Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.), vol. 20.
- ↑ Kenneth Pletcher, ed. (2010). The Geography of India: Sacred and Historic Places. Britannica Educational Publishing. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-61530-202-4.
The word's origin can perhaps be traced to panca nada, Sanskrit for "five rivers" and the name of a region mentioned in the ancient epic the Mahabharata.
- ↑ Rajesh Bala (2005). "Foreign Invasions and their Effect on Punjab". In Sukhdial Singh (ed.). Punjab History Conference, Thirty-seventh Session, March 18–20, 2005: Proceedings. Punjabi University. p. 80. ISBN 978-81-7380-990-3.
The word Punjab is a compound of two words-Panj (Five) and aab (Water), thus signifying the land of five waters or rivers. This origin can perhaps be traced to panch nada, Sanskrit for "Five rivers" the word used before the advent of Muslims with a knowledge of Persian to describe the meeting point of the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers, before they joined the Indus.
- ↑ Grenet, Frantz (2005). "An Archaeologist's Approach to Avestan Geography". In Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh; Stewart, Sarah (eds.). Birth of the Persian Empire Volume I. I.B.Tauris. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7556-2459-1.
- ↑ Garg, Gaṅgā Rām (1992). Encyclopaedia of the Hindu World. Concept Publishing Company. p. 3. ISBN 978-81-7022-374-0.
- ↑ Lassen, Christian. 1827. Commentatio Geographica atque Historica de Pentapotamia Indica [A Geographical and Historical Commentary on Indian Pentapotamia]. Weber. p. 4: "That part of India which today we call by the Persian name ''Penjab'' is named Panchanada in the sacred language of the Indians; either of which names may be rendered in Greek by Πενταποταμία. The Persian origin of the former name is not at all in doubt, although the words of which it is composed are both Indian and Persian.... But, in truth, that final word is never, to my knowledge, used by the Indians in proper names compounded in this way; on the other hand, there exist multiple Persian names which end with that word, e.g., Doab and Nilab. Therefore, it is probable that the name Penjab, which is today found in all geographical books, is of more recent origin and is to be attributed to the Muslim kings of India, among whom the Persian language was mostly in use. That the Indian name Panchanada is ancient and genuine is evident from the fact that it is already seen in the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the most ancient Indian poems, and that no other exists in addition to it among the Indians; for Panchála, which English translations of the Ramayana render with Penjab...is the name of another region, entirely distinct from Pentapotamia...."Template:Whose translation
- ↑ Latif, Syad Muhammad (1891). History of the Panjáb from the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Time. Calcultta Central Press Company. p. 1.
The Panjáb, the Pentapotamia of the Greek historians, the north-western region of the empire of Hindostán, derives its name from two Persian words, panj (five), an áb (water, having reference to the five rivers which confer on the country its distinguishing features."
- ↑ Khalid, Kanwal (2015). "Lahore of Pre Historic Era" (PDF). Journal of the Research Society of Pakistan. 52 (2): 73.
The earliest mention of five rivers in the collective sense was found in Yajurveda and a word Panchananda was used, which is a Sanskrit word to describe a land where five rivers meet. [...] In the later period the word Pentapotamia was used by the Greeks to identify this land. (Penta means 5 and potamia, water ___ the land of five rivers) Muslim Historians implied the word "Punjab " for this region. Again it was not a new word because in Persian-speaking areas, there are references of this name given to any particular place where five rivers or lakes meet.
- ↑ India-Pakistan bus links Punjab - BBC News
- 1 2 Frank Jacobs (3 July 2012). "Peacocks at Sunset". Opinionator: Borderlines. The New York Times. Retrieved 15 July 2012.
- 1 2 3 4 Cite error: The named reference
wiisymbolswas used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page). - ↑ Alter, J.P and J. Alter (1986) In the Doab and Rohilkhand: north Indian Christianity, 1815–1915. I.S.P.C.K publishing p196
- ↑ "Kathweb Nachrichten .:. Katholische Presseagentur Österreich". www.kathpress.co.at. Archived from the original on 2010-10-03.
- ↑ "Christian group says Punjab govt wants Aasia dead | Pakistan Today".[permanent dead link]
- ↑ NPR website
- ↑ BBC website
- ↑ Siobhan Heanue (25 July 2019). "Hindu sisters Reena and Raveena become face of forced religious conversion in Pakistan". ABC news. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
- ↑ "Stories of forced conversion to Islam in Pakistan". BBC News. 1 September 2014. Archived from the original on 2021-10-27. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
- ↑ "Population by Religion" (PDF). pbs.gov.pk. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
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- ↑ The list of seven rivers varies, with sometimes Swat and Gomal rivers being counted as part of Sapta-Sindhu or ancient Punjab instead of Beas.[13]
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