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Hindkowans
Total population
3,941,176[1]
Regions with significant populations
Pakistan:    3,940,000[2]  India: 600+[3]
Language(s)
Hindko, Pashto, Punjabi
Religion(s)
Islam (predominantly Sunni),[4], Christian minority estimated at 2%,[5] and small Hindu minority of indeterminate size[6][7]
Related ethnic groups
Pashtun people, Punjabi people, neighboring Indo-Aryan and Iranian peoples

Hindkowans (Hindko/Pashto: ہِندکُون) or Punjabi Pathans (Urdu: پنجاب پٹھان, Hindi: पंजाबी पठान) are an ethno-linguistic group native to the North-West Frontier Province, Punjab province and Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan and the Jammu and Kashmir state of India.^[3] However, an indeterminate number have left the region and now live in other parts of South Asia.

The largest geographically contiguous group of Hindko speakers is concentrated in the districts of Abbottabad, Haripur, Mansehra and Kaghan valley of Pakistan, while there are substantial number of geographically isolated speakers of Hindko in cities like Peshawar and Kohat.

People here tend to associate themselves with larger families instead of a language (or caste as it was formerly known) like Awan, Tanoli, Jadoon, Abbasi, and Karlal. People who speak Hindko are referred to by some academics as Punjabi Pathans^[8] probably because many tribes, for example Swatis, Jadoons, and Tanolis who settled in Districts like Abbotabad, Haripur and Mansehra town, adopted Hindko as their first language and had gained political power in these areas during the British rule and also because of many ethnic Pushtun people who speak Hinkdo as their first language in Peshawar and Kohat. The Hindko speaking people living in major cities Peshawar, Kohat, Mardan are bilingual in Pashto and Hindko. Similarly many Pashto speaking people in districts like Mansehra especially in Agror Valley and northern Tanawal (Shergarh), have become bilingual in Pashto and Hindko.

The NWFP Imperial Gazetteer (1905) regularly refers to the language as Hindko. More than one interpretation has been offered for the term Hindko. Some associate it with Hindustan (as the word maybe used during the medieval Muslim period in the Indian subcontinent), others with the Hindu people, and still others with the Indus River, which is of course the etymological source of all these terms.^[9] Long before independence Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, employed the term Hindko to mean "the language of Hindus" (viii, 1:34). Farigh Bukhari and South Asian language expert and historian Christopher Shackle believe that Hindko was a generic term applied to the Indo-Aryan dialect continuum in the northwest frontier territories and adjacent district of Attock in the Punjab province to differentiate it in function and form from Pashto. Linguists classify the language into the Indic subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which is in turn a subgroup of Indo-European languages. An estimated 2.4 per cent of the total population of Pakistan speak Hindko as their mother tongue, with more rural than urban households reporting Hindko as their household language.

The speakers of Hindko live primarily in Eight districts in NWFP: Mansehra, Mardan, Abbottabad, Haripur, Peshawar, Nowshera and Kohat, D.I.Khan, Tank in NWFP, as well as Attock Rawalpindi districts in the Punjab and parts of Kashmir; Jonathan Addleton states that "Hindko is the most significant linguistic minority in the NWFP, represented in nearly one-fifth of the province's total households." In Abbottabad District 92 per cent of households reported speaking Hindko, in Mansehra District 47 per cent, in Peshawar District 7 per cent, and in Kohat District 10 per cent (1986). Testing of inherent intelligibility among Hindko dialects through the use of recorded tests has shown that there is a northern (Hazara) dialect group and a southern group. The southern dialects are more widely understood throughout the dialect network than are the northern dialects. The dialects of rural Peshawar and Talagang are the most widely understood of the dialects tested. The dialect of Balakot is the least widely understood.

In most Hindko-speaking areas, speakers of Pashto live in the same or neighbouring communities (although this is less true in Abbottabad and Kaghan Valley than elsewhere). In the mixed areas, many people speak both languages. The relationship between Hindko and Pashto is not one of stable bilingualism. In the northeast, Hindko is the dominant language both in terms of domain of usage and in terms of the number of speakers, whereas in the southwest, Pashto seems to be advancing in those same areas.

Historically, there were two languages each in upper Afghanistan and lower Afghanistan: Persian and Pashto and Hindko and Pashto. Chach Hazara was a great centre of resistance to the British.

The Gandhara Hindko Board has published the first dictionary of the language and its launching ceremony was held on March 16, 2003. According to a press release, Sultan Sakoon, a prominent Hindku poet, has compiled the dictionary.

• Aryan Khan, a young Indian actor who has patrilineal Hindkowan ethnicity and matrilineal Punjabi ethnicity^[10][11]
• Shah Rukh Khan, an acclaimed Indian actor and producer in Bollywood and host of the popular game show, Kaun Banega Crorepati^{[12][13][14][15]}
• Prithviraj Kapoor, a noted pioneer of Indian Theatre and of the Hindi film industry^[16][17][18]
• Dilip Kumar, an Indian film actor in Bollywood and a member of the Rajya Sabha^[19][20][21]

• Hindko Land, a thesis presented by Dr Elahi Bakhsh Akhtar Awan at the World
• Hindko Conference held at Peshawar in 2005