r/PakPunjab

As Punjab grows day by day it has taken the sole role of earner of the economy the next best thing happening to Pakistan's economy is Karachi which is being ruined by PPP. Then there comes the issue of cultural integration it's harder to integrate people who've lived in tribal codes and hold an affinity for their ethnic pride to integrate them to urban Punjab we can see this with the rising crime rates in places like Lahore, Rawalpindi. It doesn't help either that the political system in Punjab is dominated by one party that is focused on pouring money onto useless roads that just make Punjab a concrete jungle. Albeit good stuff has also been done. I feel like Punjab is taking high risk with all the factors in question

When the city of modern-day Quetta was discovered by the British, it was a small settlement consisting of mud houses and a small fort. Despite its strategic location on major trade routes, it could not be developed into a proper, large city. During the British era, Punjabi laborer and traders helped build the city into a modern-day provincial capital. Even after the creation of Pakistan, Punjabis continued to play a role in the development of the city with Punjabi educated professionals especially teachers and doctors operating the education and health sectors in the city. Sadly, they were never accepted as belonging to Balochistan and were always referred to as settlers despite being the builders of Quetta. Today, the Punjabi population of Quetta has dropped from 16% of the population in 1998 to 4% of the population in 2023. Every other day, dead bodies of innocent civilian Punjabis are returned from Balochistan. Despite more than hundred years of living in the province, Punjabis are still treated as outsiders and worst of all, Baloch youth educated in Punjab on Punjabi scholarships are the perpetrators of these crimes.

Punjabis are already being forced out of Quetta and with the current demographic change happening in northern Punjab, it seems like our very own homeland is under invasion. More important than the government of Punjab, the ordinary Punjabi needs to understand the gravity of this situation and needs to stand up for their homeland. Otherwise, our situation will be no different from the situation during Abdali's invasion as put by Bulleh Shah:

کھادا پیتا لاہےدا

تے باقی احمد شاہے دا

Mine is Chole Chana (with aloo) and haleem with fresh naan, full fat buffalo lassi, mix achar on the side, and halwa made from desi ghee.

Hello everyone,
I am back. Due to a recent account ban, I was unable to moderate this subreddit for a while. However, I am fully back now, and I will be strictly monitoring the subreddit moving forward to ensure it remains a safe and constructive space for everyone.
To keep this community thriving, we need to address a few critical ground rules regarding behaviour and the direction of this sub.

There is absolutely no room for racism, ethnic discrimination, or targeted hate against fellow Pakistanis. You are always welcome to share your perspective, debate, and voice your opinions, but your arguments must never target or degrade any community.

Anyone living in Punjab or speaking the Punjabi language is a Punjabi. Any form of discrimination or exclusion against people within Punjab will not be tolerated.

Our focus should be inward and constructive. Let's use this platform to talk about how we can contribute to society, protect our heritage, and save the Punjabi language, culture, and the region of Punjab itself.

Do not call anyone "Indian" or "non-Pakistani" simply because you disagree with their opinion. Disagreements happen, but using national or ethnic identity as an insult or a tool to invalidate someone is strictly prohibited. Direct name-calling and harassment violate Reddit’s Content Policy. Content that breaches these rules will be swiftly removed, either by the mod team or by Reddit itself.

Let’s not make this sub circle jerk sub. It will make it look like punjabi nationalism bad. Our nationalism shouldn't be based on hate but on self-improvement and criticism. I hope you guys will follow the rules and will not engage in hate and racism.

Panjabi severely needs a proper standardisation to be able to survive. It is a major language in brutw numbers, but its unstandardised in Pakistan and has no future if we don't intervene. The Standard Panjabi in India is also a mockery of our language and forces Hindustanisation.

We know that the State of Pakistan will never do anything for us, so its up to us (and mostly the Panjab-oriented intellectuals) to engage in this. I spent some time reading about it and I think Norway and Finland represent the best examples for us Panjabis and our language. They both faced similar problems to us and fixed them.

1. Norway had a problem back in the day where the elite's language was either Danish or Danish influenced. So, Ivar Aasen rejected it and constructed Nynorsk by synthesizing the most conservative, rural western dialects, intentionally seeking out older grammatical forms to create a "pure" Norwegian. IF, we are to go this way, we already have Jatki/Jangli in Panjab. It is a highly conservative dialect, and we can elevate it, coin new modern terms and formally standardise it similar to Norway. It will also bypass the current centre of Lahore and damage Majhi's hegemony (which currently acts as the go-to dialect when someone thinks of Panjabi, but its becoming very Urdu-influenced in Lahore, a problem similar to how Norwegian Nationalists saw their language). A Panjabi board (non-governmental, a volunteer org) could study the conservative dialects of the Bar regions (Jatki/Jangli, Shahpuri) and create a new High Register from them. The only issue is that this approach would be Purist to the point that maybe some orthodox Muslims would oppose it, not sure. We'll have to aggressively purge Urdu and Perso-Arabic loanwords while also avoiding Tatsamas. My main problem is that the Nynorsk model created an Ausbau language (a language separated by development) that is distinct from the dominant state language. It guarantees immense friction. By disenfranchising Majha, we'll run into Norway's problem which is still divided between Bokmål and Nynorsk today. If we do this, we'll have to avoid a permanent schism between the Majha Region and the newly register.

2. Finland instead combined different dialects together. Finnish linguists took the existing Western dialect's literary standard and grafted Eastern vocabulary and morphology onto it to placate Eastern nationalists. They had genuine fear of their nation splitting hence the compromise. If we are to do this, we could combine the major dialects of Pakistani Panjab (Majhi, Multani, Hindko, Jatki etc) into a Taksali varient. How that will be done is something that should be left to actual experts and intellectuals who may ever get involved in this. But it could look something like taking Majhi as the structural base but heavily altering it to accommodate the Lehnda continuums to prevent them from breaking away into separate linguistic identities. Majhi remains the core structural framework, maintaining its analytic grammar and postpositions. Also, the Finns used Eastern folklore to justify injecting Eastern words into the standard, we could utilize the classical Sufi poetry (which heavily features Lehnda dialects, like the works of Khwaja Farid or Bulleh Shah) to justify injecting Multani and Jatki vocabulary into standard Majhi. The hardest part though is that this involved a lot of intellectual weight from Finnish people in an era called Romantic Nationalism. The Finnish people got tired of foreign languages taking precedence in their own homelands and aggressively started to standardise their own language without any government support. One Finnish Nationalist even went to all corners of the land to collect all epics and folktales to create a Finnish historical myth. They changed their names en masse to native Finnish names and also started to affect how religious was in their region. How well that will go for Panjab? Idk, risky. Plus, they also built a world-class education system afterwards to make sure their setup doesn't flop and their language continues to this day.

One last thing, this process would likely create an Institutional Diglossia like in most cases where people speak the Formal Varient in official settings, in schools and their books are written in it, their education system and their official media as well as their scientific literature. But people at home and in their localities continue speaking their own dialects. I actually think that's a better idea, we get to keep our diversity and also build a formal standard for our language.

You are a cancer towards the nation.

Hi All,

Lately, I've been feeling alone because I don't get to see people like me here in Isb and Rawalpindi. I can't explain this feeling, back in 2010 the interactions felt so good but nowadays everywhere I see people from a specific ethnicity. Our own street here has been filled from people who we can never relate to, it's just like we are so different from them.

Every shop they own, every business they own. People from our ethnicity seems to be moving here from Isb/Rwp or have we been outnumbered?

I visited lahore for the first time this year in January and I could see my own people finally. I felt so good. Even small interactions I could hear in barber shop, nashta spots, shopkeepers were more personal rather than 3-4 lines which we talk here in isb/rwp.

We still have our first home in rwp and we've noticed that people from a particular ethnicity has started to come over there although the ratio is 35% them and 65% us but it just doesn't feel like home anymore.

Hi I’m a gujjar from Lalamusa region in gujrat district. I’ve noticed my Punjabi dialect is a little different to most. Most Punjabi’s use “si” as there past tense I’ll give an example “mein shopping Gaya si “ but in my dialect it would be “Mein shopping gaya ya” our past tense is not si it’s more like a “aya” type sound. We also use words that people from other cities wouldn’t use like kikan for how and etc. how do you speak Punjabi with strangers especially when others won’t understand your dialect and does anyone know what my dialect is ?

These people are damaging our province so much. They have the audacity to illegally rig votes against our representatives to occupy their seats in our assembly. And they are so incompetent, because of them Punjabi infants are contracting HIV! They are literal goons, drive around in cars with black shades picking up people who dare speak against them. Heartless monsters, when our people fall in manholes and die because of their idiocracy, they start harassing their families to admit it was their own doing. Even more maddening, they use our tax money to subsidize their sugar mills. Not to mention the fact that I'm tired of seeing their faces on literally every bill board. We pay for these services not them so why are their faces going up there? To top it off, a majority of these barbarians are illiterate. We need a Punjabi Liberation movement to cleanse our province of them!

Actually I'm gonna name them, I'm not scared of their woke cancellation. The parasites ruining our province, PMLN morons, must be deported!

Context for those who arent chronically online, making fun of people who blame all of Punjab's problem on migrants from other provinces instead of challenging the monsters actually ruining our province. There are kids in cities with no knowledge of how punjab works. Our farms use migrant labour, poultry farms operate majoritarily on migrant labour. Not even talking about heresay, I've witnessed both these things myself. So instead of crying about migrants taking all the shops, go earn some money and become useful.

Salam everyone

I am ethnically Baloch from the pak-iran border areas. I am a resident of both Pakistan and Iran and in Pakistan I love in Gwadar. Recently there has been a massive increase in ethnic violence in Pakistan. And I can see a lot of people, especially in this sub expres their concern about these issues.

I am doing this ama to give an honest answer to your questions, current situations and other stuff. Please be respectful in the comment and I can hope I can provide a good outcome

When I see Punjab and punjabis on both side of the border I see a nation lost backstabbing each other getting taken advantage of politically militarily. I see brotherhood that's not lost but confused in it's own identity especially here am I a Muslim? Am I Punjabi? Am I a Pakistani? Whose history should I own? To the other ethnicities it's clear but for so much reasons punjabis are divided. I don't see bhangras no more unless it's a special event. I don't hear maiyya tapey no more it's sad kind of depressing. What happened to kabadis what happened to sitting in thandi Chavan and gup shup. Speaking Punjabi=paindu. Truly we are declining we might be the truly last generation that ever felt the joy of our culture for awhile. If I could write a love letter to this land it'd be please come back just one more time just once more. I miss the closeness the bond our culture had. Be proud hold your head up you are the continuation of a great bloodline

Just that's it nothing else. Proud to be a Punjabi.