Not every Pakistani Punjabi claims Pashtun ancestry. That’s completely wrong. But there are Punjabis who have Pashtun ancestry and they are called Punjabi Pashtuns/Pathans. First, you need to understand, “who is Punjabi” or “what makes someone Punjabi?” Punjabi identity is not just an ethnic identity because in ethnicity the members of a particular group have a common ancestry or they all share a common descent. This is not the case with Punjabis. Punjabis don’t share a common ancestry rather they are a multi-ethnic nation. Their identity is primarily defined by their language, geography, and culture. The word Punjab or پنجاب is a combination of two Persian words Panj or پنج‎ meaning five and Ab or آب‎ meaning water. The word Punjab thus means ‘The land of five rivers’', referring to the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. People, irrespective of caste, ethnicity, tribe, clan, religion/sect, etc. who live or belong to this land of five rivers (Punjab) are called Punjabis.

Now coming to the question, as I already said Punjabis are a multi-ethnic nation and there are hundreds of such different ethnicities and tribes that have been living in Punjab or associating themselves as Punjabis. Among them are Punjabi Pashtuns/Pathans. They are originally Pashtun people who have settled in the Punjab region of Pakistan and India many centuries ago and have been settling for a long time in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Because they have been living in Punjab for a long time, now they have integrated and assimilated into the Punjabi society. Today, they all can speak the Punjabi language and mostly identify themselves as Punjabis. There is no exact data available on the numbers of Punjabi Pashtuns. However, according to the 1901 Census of the Province of Punjab and adjacent princely States conducted during the British colonial rule, there were 263,897 Pathans living in Punjab that constituted approximately 2.17% of the Punjabi Muslim population’s share as they were listed among the Punjabi Muslim category by the British government at that time. But today after the partition and through the migrations of Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Afghanistan, it is estimated that Pashtuns constitute about 8–11% population of Pakistani Punjab. That means there are approximately 9–12 million Punjabi Pashtuns/Pathans (excluding recent migrants from KPK who don’t have a domicile of Punjab and the Afghan migrants from Afghanistan).

These non-frontier Pathans are usually known by the town or locality in which they are settled, e.g., Lodhianvi Pathans, Jalandari Pathans, Amritsari Pathans, Multani Pathans, Derawali Pathans, or Lahori Pathans. The history of Pashtuns in Punjab is much earlier. Large numbers of Pathans accompanied the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni, Muhammad of Ghor, and Babur, and many of them obtained grants of land in the Punjab plains and founded Pathan colonies that still exist today. Many Pathans were driven out of present-day Afghanistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to the invasion of the Mongol armies and took refuge in the plains east of the Indus River, which marked the terminus of Mongol aggression. Internal feuds or famine also prompted Pathan migrations. Colonies of Pathans (Pashtun people) arriving in Punjab are accounted for by Sir Densil Ibbetson in the following manner:

“During the Khilji, Lodi, and Suri dynasties many Pathans migrated to Punjab especially during the reign of Jalal-ud-din Khalji, Bahlol Lodhi, and Sher Shah Suri. These naturally belonged to the Ghilzai section from which those kings sprang.”

The tribes most commonly to be found in the Punjab region are the Niazai, Kundi, Miana, Bangash, Yusufzai, Hassan Zai, Mandanr, Lodhi, Kakar, Sherwani, Orakzai, Tareen, Sulemankhel sulemani, Kakazai (although their Pashtun origin is often debated), Karlanri, Barakzai, Khizerzai, Babar and the Zamand Pathans. Of these the most widely distributed are the Yusufzai, of whom a body of 12,000 accompanied the Mughal Emperor Babur in the final invasion of India, and settled in the plains of India and Punjab. But as a rule, the Pathans who have settled away from the frontier have lost all memory of their tribal divisions, and indeed almost all their national characteristics.

There are also Pashto-speaking Pathans/Pashtuns in Punjab. They mostly live in the Western and the Northwestern parts of the Punjab province of Pakistan. The districts of Punjab with a significant Pashtun population are Mianwali, Attock, Rawalpindi, Layyah, and Dera Ghazi Khan.

Non-Pashto speaking Pathans/Pashtuns also live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They are mostly called Hindkowan/Peshori Pathans because their first language is Hindko (often considered a variety of Punjabi) but they have Pashtun ancestry. They mostly live in some districts of the Hazara division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (more specifically Haripur, Abbottabad, Mansehra, and some parts of Kohistan, Kohat, and Peshawar). In the south of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the districts of Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Lakki Marwat also have a significant number of non-Pashto speaking Pathans. They usually speak the Derawali dialect of Seraiki, which is also considered another variety of Punjabi by many people but this is a controversial thing because a lot of locals would say it is a completely separate language.

Kasuri Pathan or Pathan of Kasur, Punjab in the early 19th century

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