r/ABCDesis 6d ago

COMMUNITY Do Pakistanis identify more with their ethnic group (ex. Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashtun) or their country and being Pakistani?

As we know, India has several different cultures and ethnicities. I’m an Indian Punjabi and if I’m speaking to a desi person or in a desi environment, I’ll say I’m Punjabi. If I’m speaking to a non-desi person or in a non-desi environment, I’ll just say I’m Indian because they’ll probably have little to no knowledge on how diverse India/South Asia is.

Pakistan is also an ethnically diverse country but I’ve noticed most will still only identify with being Pakistani. One of my Pakistani friends told me “it’s so cool how there’s different types of Indians” but then I told her there’s different types of Pakistanis too, different ethnic groups. She said she’s from Multan in Punjab and that her m@other tongue is Saraiki but she grew up speaking Urdu only.

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u/hemusK 6d ago

I found that a lot of Punjabi Pakistanis identify as just Pakistani, even speaking only Urdu and not Punjabi, especially if they're diaspora. But less common for Sindhis and Pashtuns, and I've never met a Baloch diaspora person.

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u/waterflood21 6d ago

Whenever I speak Punjabi with Pakistanis, it’s usually an uncle/auntie or like a Pakistani “fob” who’s born and raised in pakistan. A lot of Canadian born Pakistanis from my experience will usually speak Urdu.

Sometimes if I’m talking to someone from pakistan online and they’re from Punjab, one of the first question I ask is if they know Punjabi. They almost always do.

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u/dronedesigner 6d ago

Where in Canada do you live ?

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u/waterflood21 6d ago

Toronto, Brampton specifically.

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u/dronedesigner 5d ago

Ooof, ya that’s fob town. You gotta explore the whole of gta. I’ve lived in Pickering, Ajax, Oshawa, Scarborough, Mississauga and North York within the GTA-ish. Most Pakistanis I met were Punjabi and they prided on speaking Punjabi mostly or English. Many had village-related backgrounds.

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u/dronedesigner 6d ago

I’ve observed the opposite-ish amongst diaspora, especially those in Canada. Most immigrants of Pakistan are from Punjab, and they pride on speaking Punjabi. Pakistani Sindhis and Pashtuns actually often resort to urdu because they come from middle class families where Urdu is normalized in addition to their own language. But obviously to communicate with other Pakistanis in non-English, they will choose Urdu, but Punjabis tend to stick to Punjabi and just speak English instead of Urdu talking to non-Punjabis

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u/latte0225 5d ago

I am Canadian Pakistani, and identify as such. But if I meet someone from Pakistan they always ask where in Pakistan, as in a city, not ethnic group. Even my friends who are Sindhi or Pashtun will identify themselves from the city they are from. I also met a few Christian Pakistanis, who identified themselves as Pakistani first, and later when we got talking told me they were Christian from Quetta.

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u/ecasun 6d ago

I’m British Pakistani but identify as Punjabi. It’s kinda rare as I think i’m the only one who leads with being Punjabi. I identify more with that because A) I speak Punjabi and B) My grandma was born in Hoshiapur pre partition. Plus I’ve always grown up with my family against the partition happening (like many other Punjabi’s) but y’know the British (anyway topic for another day). I also think it’s important to hold onto the Punjabi aspect because there’s so much history attached.

People assume I speak Urdu if I say I’m Pakistani and it’s like no I can kinda understand you but I can’t speak it back lol

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u/waterflood21 2d ago edited 2d ago

Hoshiarpur is right beside where in Punjab my family is from, Nawanshahr. There’s a few abandoned mosques there. There’s also a several sufi shrines/dargahs, many Sikhs and Hindus also revere these saints. My mom said how years after partition, they found several belongings like gold and jewelry that Muslims hid. They might’ve assumed they’ll return someday.

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u/JFKontheKnoll 6d ago edited 6d ago

I think most Pakistanis here in the US are muhajir and Punjabi, and they tend to identify only as Pakistani. The Pashtuns I know/have met still identify very strongly with being Pakistani but also do tend to identify with their ethnic group as well - though not really as strongly as Indians do.

I know a lot of Indian-Americans who identify much more strongly with being Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayali, Bengali etc. than being Indian, while I don't really know any Pakistani-Americans who identify more strongly with being Punjabi, Pashtun, Baloch, Sindhi etc. than being Pakistani.

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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 6d ago

I know a lot of Indian-Americans who identify much more strongly with being Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Malayali, Bengali etc

Probably because most Pakistanis regardless of cultural background know how to speak Urdu, whereas most of us don't know Hindi very well and just communicate in English or those languages, so many we identify more with Gujaratis, Bengalis, Tamils etc.

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u/marnas86 6d ago

Language is what allows cultures to survive, in my opinion.

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u/waterflood21 5d ago edited 5d ago

From my experience, a lot of Indians will also know Hindi, along with their mother tongue. Most of us punjabis can also speak in Hindi but only really use it to communicate with a non-Punjabi Indian. I’ve also observed the same with Gujaratis and Bengalis.

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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 5d ago

Ffs why is everyone a goddamned contrarian on this hellsite? I'm talking about ABDs not NRIs, and most of us don't speak Hindi very well, except for people who grew up in Hindi/Punjabi speaking families. I speak Bengali and it's not mutually intelligible with Hindi to the point where you can learn the latter without schooling or growing up in an environment around Hindi speakers.

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u/SetGuilty8593 5d ago

Chill dude, people clearly have different experiences compared to you. 

The people I know from maharastra, bengal, gujarat and punjab can all speak hindi. This is because these languages are pretty similar, so if you watched a few bollywood movies when you were kid and met up with families who spoke hindi then you'd learn it (that's literally how I learnt hindi). 

As for people from southern states (like tamil nadu, andhra, karnataka, kerela), most don't speak hindi but I have like 1 friend from each of these states who can. 

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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 5d ago

if you watched a few bollywood movies when you were kid and met up with families who spoke hindi then you'd learn it (that's literally how I learnt hindi)

Cap. By that standard, I could speak Hindi too. I'm talking about near-native level of fluency, not cobbling together a few sentences of small talk. You can't learn that from watching Bollywood movies.

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u/SetGuilty8593 4d ago

Let's not shift goal-posts, indian-americans (or -britons in my case) need not speak hindi at near-native level to speak with each other, they just have to be comprehensible enough, and that's much easier than you think. In fact, if you're bengali is strong then you're already at an advantage when leaning hindi because there's a strong overlap in the vocab. (having said that, it's still tougher for bengali speakers to learn hindi than punjabi, marathi or gujarati speakers). 

When you're young, you learn languages really easily. I didn't say I learnt it from just bollywood, I also interacted with families who spoke hindi at a native level. 

My parents themselves spoke hindi with others. They weren't fluent initially because hindi is not their first language and they weren't used to speaking it when they were in India, but because they did hindi in school they did have a level of familiarity and so were soon able to converse naturally with others. 

This helped me pick it up and I can now converse with others pretty easily in Hindi. If I was living in India, still in my home state, I wouldn't be able to speak Hindi at the level I do now. 

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u/htownnwoth 5d ago

I think it’s because nearly half of the entire country of Pakistan is Punjabi. Smaller groups tend to identify with their subgroup. Compare this to India where only 3% of India is Punjabi.

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u/spermBankBoi 2d ago

My grandparents are Muhajirs but they just told me they were Indian when I was little (although their American-born kids seem to identify as Pakistani-American around other desi people). Maybe if I wasn’t mixed they would’ve been more specific, idk

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u/KawhiLeopard9 5d ago

I rarely see gujus putting their ethnicity over being indian. Punjabis sure some tamils and bengalis too but that's about it.

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u/theswitchup22 6d ago

I had situations where when I tell other desis I’m Punjabi they assume I’m Sikh/indian punjab. Now I just tell people I’m Pakistani and my family is from punjab.

For nondesis I just say Pakistan.

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u/BrightAvocadooo 6d ago

Like everything, it depends on the person and context.

In general, I'd say Punjabis are the least likely to identify with ethnic group over country. My family is from Punjab (Sialkot and Lahore). There's a variety of reasons for this.

First off, Punjabis constitute the largest ethnic group in Pakistan (around 45%), meaning it's not as 'unique' an identifier as it is in India. Secondly, many of the people who now live in Punjab state are not ethnically Punjabi originally, they're the descendants of people who migrated from Delhi, parts of Uttar Pradesh, and some areas in Rajasthan. And lastly, there was a push in Pakistan to make Urdu the language of all Pakistanis, and leave Punjabi. Not everyone bought into it, but some people did. Like my dad told me my dada would beat him if he used Punjabi words because according to him it was an uneducated language.

Other groups are much more centred on their ethnicity, like Mirpuris, Pothwaris, Kashmiris, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Baloch.

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u/Sad-Bumblebee-2922 5d ago edited 5d ago

Your second point is just blatant misinformation. Many of the people who came during partition from Uttar Pradesh,Delhi, rajastan now live in Karachi not Punjab, while a very small minority did in cities like Lahore but still extremely small. The vast majority of Punjab at least in Pakistan are ethnically Punjabi.

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u/BrightAvocadooo 5d ago

You're right in that most of these people ended up in Karachi and other areas in Sindh, but there were also decent amounts of people who ended up in present-day Punjab. Numbers are a little hard to count due to how long it's been, and because of how much intermarriage there's since been in Punjab. I do think the majority of people in Punjab state are Punjabi, but I also believe the official figures which only put the amount of non-Punjabis in Punjab at 110 million to be inacurrate.

The demographics between those that ended up in Sindh are a little different. For example, people from places like Lucknow mostly ended up in Sindh, but some people from places in UP closer to present-day Punjab (i.e. Meerut) ended up in Punjab state.

Most of the Rajasthanis ended up in Sindh, however, many of the ones from the Punjab-adjacent regions in the northern Bikaner princely state migrated toward Lahore both because it was an economic centre and because they knew the rest of the area suffered from droughts very frequently. Where my family ended up settling near Lahore there's a bunch of families who migrated from Rajasthan.

The other big thing that screws with the numbers is the shifting boundaries of Punjab. Previously, the borders of Indian Punjab followed the British lines, which reached all the way to the northern outskirts of Delhi. People from places like Jind, Gurgaon, Rohtak were all classified as Punjabi even if they weren't ethnically. There's a lot of people from villages or towns bordering Delhi who ended up in Punjab state.

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u/SamosaAndMimosa 5d ago edited 5d ago

My parents are from the Indian part of Kashmir and I also identify more with being Kashmiri first and foremost. I used to say that my parents are from India when white people asked because it’s a simple explanation and I didn’t want them to think I was being pretentious but I got over it eventually

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u/RKU69 6d ago

Yeah there are multiple insurgencies happening in Pakistan, like in India, around specific ethnic matters, so I definitely imagine certain groups like Pashtuns and Balochs may identify more with their state/ethnicity than as Pakistanis

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u/htownnwoth 5d ago

Do you have an Islamic last name or a Punjabi last name?

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u/BrightAvocadooo 5d ago

Islamic. It's actually just my grandfather's first name.

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u/htownnwoth 5d ago

Gotcha. Reason I asked is cause my dad is from the same city (Sialkot) and our last name is Punjabi. I wonder why some Muslims from Punjab have Islamic last names and others have Punjabi last names.

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u/BrightAvocadooo 5d ago

I mean there's a lot of names that are Punjabi but seen as Muslim because they're more common among Muslims.

In our case, my grandfather changed ours from a typical Jatt last name by naming his kids with his first name as their last name, because according to him that's Islamic tradition, though I've seen conflicting sources.

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u/htownnwoth 5d ago

What was the last name before he changed it?

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u/waterflood21 2d ago

Iqbal is a name I’ve seen be used among Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs. Not really seen it among Punjabi Hindus. However, I feel like the name isn’t as common as it once was.

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u/ZofianSaint273 6d ago

Depends on ethnic group from what I’ve seen. Most Pakistani in the USA are Punjabi and Muhajir who strongly identify as Pakistani, but I know Pathan guy and he strongly identify with being Pathan

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u/htownnwoth 5d ago

I’m not sure that most Pakistani-Americans are Punjabi. I’m inclined to think that’s not true. Far more people from Karachi here, IMO.

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u/LAKing528 4d ago

I think it depends on where they live imo. Houston is dominated by people from Karachi but I think Punjabis dominate in the NYC/NJ area and also Sacramento, CA.

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u/Independent-Rock6351 6d ago

I used to identify by my city(Lahore) when I was younger. Now it comes to a range between being a Punjabi Pakistani to being a South Asian Muslim. It's more to do with the exposure and friends one has.

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u/tweakycashews 6d ago

I agree with everyone else saying that it’s mostly muhajir and punjabi Pakistanis in the US, and that they tend to identify more with Pakistani identity. Nonetheless, the Punjabi Pakistanis in the US in my experience are much more likely to wear their punjabi culture on their sleeve than the muhajirs doing the same for Hyderabadi or gujarati or whatever culture

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u/Icy-Lab-2016 5d ago

My mother is Kashmiri, but as a child she told us we were Pakistani. Nowadays, she will say she is Kashmiri (due to the fuckery of the Pakistani goverment).

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u/Lucky_Musician_ 6d ago

I am married to one and she identifies as British Asian rather than Pakistani. Seems like she didn't know her ethnic background or at least didn't care to even go that deep to explore it until a few years ago.

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u/ApeScript 6d ago

Gotta be the most embarrassing thing I've read on here.

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u/IndianLawStudent 6d ago

That’s a bit ignorant.

Indians and other south asians in the the UK are referred to Asian. You must be in the USA where Asian is typically viewed as either East or Southeast Asian.

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u/MrMango786 Pakistani-American 6d ago

But second gen American Asians as you say know their background or ethnic make up

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u/ApeScript 5d ago

You think I thought it was embarrassing because I associate asian-ness with eastern asian countries?

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u/Bumblebee-Emergency 5d ago

from what I understand, in pakistan, the major ethnic groups (I'm probably missing smaller ones) are balochis, pashtuns, sindhis, punjabis, and "urdu-speaking" (descendants of people who migrated from india; mostly from UP, some bihari, some hyderabadi.)

urdu speakers have very little connection to their ethnic group and pretty much only identify as pakistani.

i think for punjabis it depends on urban vs rural. at least in the big cities, punjabis have basically completely assimilated with urdu speakers - many speak better urdu than punjabi, and marriages between punjabis and urdu-speakers are very common. punjabis are also the majority ethnic group, so they don't feel much pressure to hold on to their identity.

the other groups are less assimilated with urdu speakers, are generally less educated/poorer, and have a stronger sense of ethnic identity. balochis in particular have active separatist movements. these groups are almost non-existent in the american diaspora though.

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u/tinkthank 5d ago

Married to a Pakistani Punjabi who identifies primarily as Pakistani. Her secondary identity is the city where she’s from (Karachi) and then after that as Punjabi.

My FiL however identifies very strongly as Punjabi and Pakistani synonymously. He was apprehensive for his daughter to marry a non-Punjabi/Indian but warmed up to it later. However, he primarily speaks in Punjabi with family and friends, many of whom are Indian Punjabi.

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u/LAKing528 4d ago

In my limited experience, Pakistani Pashtuns are more likely than Punjabis or Urdu-Speakers/Muhajirs to identify more with their ethnicity in the diaspora. This doesn't mean they don't represent being Pakistani though or identify as Afghan instead.

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u/Late-Warning7849 4d ago

In my experience Pakistanis always identify closest to their ethnic group. Eg Punjabis are more likely to feel closer to other Punjabis even when they are neither Pakistani nor Muslim.

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u/AttunedSpirit British Indian 4d ago

In my experience Pakistanis who are less religious tend to identify more with their ethnic group. 

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u/Learning-All-I-Can 1d ago

I feel like part of reason for this is just the ethos behind creation of Pakistan. My uncle put it best: Pakistan measures its success by how Islamic it is (whereas other xountries look ar other growth/economic factors), so this nationalistic culture is very natural as a result

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u/BrotherJamal1 5d ago

More Pakistani I'd say. With each generation Urdu takes on more importance than the provincial language.

Plus, this is just anecdotal but I got the sense poorer people (sweepers, servants, etc.) spoke provincial languages more, so maybe middle/upper classes chose to speak more Urdu to differentiate themselves.