Ancestors of Pakistanis were Hindus

Were the ancestors of Pakistanis not Hindu?

I have covered this up many a times but Zeshan Mahmood response is bringing me back in the ring.

Were the ancestors of Pakistanis not Hindu?

Yes majority of Pakistanis who live in Punjab and Sindh have Hindu ancestry. But that will not be correct to say every Pakistani has Hindu ancestry.

There is no point to disrespect Hindus/Hinduism altogether being a Pakistani nor it is a benchmark to prove my patriotism. Our complicated nature of relationship with India at state level doesn't mean we should maintain rigid and biased opinions towards Hinduism. I earlier finished one of my response few hours before where I was giving credit to Pakistan as birthplace of Hinduism.

To all those Pakistani friends who don't know.

• The word Hindu/Hinduism was abbreviated from river Indus which currently passes in modern day Pakistan. In addition, Hindu is also geographical term refers to a person who lives in suburbs of Northwest parts of River Indus.
• Lahore (Luv) and Kasoor (Kush) were sons of Rama.
• Karachi was named under one Hindu Saint Mai Golachi.
• Rawalpindi is named after epic character of folkfare Rawal-Jugni.
• Peshawar is abbreviated from Purushpura (Sanskrit) which means “City of Men”.
• Taxila (now Rawalpindi) is privileged to have one of the oldest university of the world. It was important center of Hinduism and Budhism. Even Taxila is abbreviated name of Thaksha which was son of Lord Bharat.
• The inhabitants of Indus Valley and Gandhara Valley were mostly Hindus/Buddhists.

Just giving you an example out of the box, this is currency note of Indonesia (largest Muslim country in the world). And some of you might get shocked to see the sign of Lord Ganesha is at 20K Rupiah.

It is my humble request to not feel any shame. Due to our consistent denial, we are consistently getting such kind of questions one after another at social media. We need to keep this fact in mind that Islam is only 1.4k years old religion and obviously there were people who were following other faiths. It is understandable our ancestors were following other religions before Islam. Even if we take as Arab ancestry for a while, many people in Arab were idol worshipers before Islam. Hinduism at the other end is widely considered as one of the oldest religion in the world and was most practiced in modern day Pakistan before the arrival of Islam. Denial of history will create more embarrassment for us internationally.

~MAK

Mohammad Amir Khokhar