There is no definitive answer to the question of how many Punjabi speakers there are in the world. I keep hearing many people talk about the total population of Punjabis and reading their writings. In fact, this issue arose after the partition of 1947. Earlier, Punjab was united and a large number of Punjabis did not move anywhere except Punjab. In any case, earlier there were no such facilities as were available later, such as planes, trains, buses and roads. There was no direct sea view from any side of Punjab. The sea is far to the south. On that side, the region of Sindh, Balochistan and Rajasthan is visible. There is no sea on the other sides, neither towards Afghanistan, nor towards China, nor towards Delhi nor towards Bihar. Punjabis were not ready to leave their homes and migrate to other countries quickly anyway. A person leaves home only when he becomes tired of hunger, just like nowadays people from both Punjabs are leaving their country and going to Europe and other countries. The land in Punjab was good and fertile and the year’s grains used to come for food and drink. The Pathans, Mughals, Arabs and finally the British who attacked Punjab left their areas while dying of hunger and invaded this country. Censuses were conducted before 1947. After the partition of Punjab, the real trouble arose, one is that Punjab was divided into two parts in the beginning and the other is that it was divided into three parts before Indian Punjab. Delhi and Islamabad, which were once part of Punjab, were both expelled from Punjab. After 1947, due to the wars between India and Pakistan, there was no reconciliation or communication between the two parts of Punjab. Visa restrictions were also in place and after that, barbed wire was also installed on the border. Now all Punjabis are connected with each other because of the internet. Data about the population of Punjabis is also available from the net. But the interaction of the people of Punjab is still very little. The people of East Punjab do not have much knowledge about the population of Punjabis living in West Punjab. The residents of West Punjab remain confused due to the division of East Punjab into three parts. The residents of East Punjab do not even know how many Punjabis live in West Punjab, because they do not know how many Punjabis live in the Pathan states of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Sindh and Kashmir.
I have heard many scholars of East Punjab say that the number of Punjabis in West Punjab is around 4 crore. If I remember correctly, I once heard famous singer Babbu Maan say on YouTube that the population of Punjabis in Western Punjab is around 40 million. Today I will try my best to tell you about the population of Punjabis living in Western Punjab and the rest of Pakistan. You know about the population of Eastern Punjab, you will know the total population yourself. Let’s take Western Punjab first. The people of Eastern Punjab do not know about some things. If we accept Lahore as the center of Punjab and the areas of Jhelum, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Pindikhet on the hill side of Lahore are called the Pothohar region, then the dialect of Punjabi spoken here is Pothohari. Beyond Jhelum comes the area of Pakistani Kashmir, which has a population of around 5 million and only Punjabi is spoken here. This includes the Potohari dialect. Mirpur district has a population of 2.5 million, which is 70% of the total Kashmiri population of 4 million, meaning the rest of Kashmir, which is under Pakistan, has a population of only 1.5 million. The real Kashmiri language is spoken only in Indian Kashmir, such as in Srinagar. From Lahore to Multan, to the south, Saraiki is spoken, which we call the Saraiki dialect. In Peshawar too, before 1979, when Russia did not attack Afghanistan, Hindko speakers were the majority. Later, after the Russian attack on Afghanistan, the Pathans of Afghanistan and the Pathans of the border area migrated from there and came to Pakistani territory and settled in Peshawar in large numbers. Due to which, in the district of Peshawar, which was the stronghold of Hindko, Pashto speakers increased and Hindko speakers decreased. The total population of Pakistan is about 250 million in 2024. Of this, the population of Punjab province is 140 million, which is 55% of the total Pakistani population. All Punjabi speakers live in it. If a person from any other province comes and settles here, he also understands and speaks Punjabi. Sindh is the second largest province of Pakistan in terms of population. Its population is 55 million, which is 21% of the entire population of Pakistan. At least 5 million Punjabis live in the province of Sindh, of which 25 million are Punjabi speakers, over 1 million are Saraiki speakers, about 8 million are Hindko speakers and about 70 thousand are Kashmiris. This is about 10% of the total population of Sindh. The province with the third largest population of Pathans is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has a population of over 40 million. 25% of the population of this province speaks Punjabi. There is a very large area in this province called Haripur Hazara. Where 7 million people live, they live in the districts of Haripur Hazara and Abbottabad. The population of Hindustani speaking Punjabi in these districts is about 7 million. In the district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dera Ismail Khan has a population of 18 million, of which 67% are Punjabi speakers. That is, 2 out of 3 parts are Punjabi speakers.
, which is about 12 lakhs. Out of the 45 lakh population of Peshawar district, 10% i.e. 4.5 lakhs are Hindko Punjabi speakers. Out of the 15 lakh population of Kohat district, 10% are Punjabi speakers, which is about 3 lakhs. Out of the 25 lakh population of Garh Mardan in Pathana, 2% are Punjabi speakers, which is about 50,000. Out of the 13 lakh population of Bannon in Pathana, 2% are Punjabi speakers, which is about 26,000. Another district Malakand has a total population of 8 lakhs, 2% are Punjabi speakers, this population is about 16,000. 25% i.e. 1 crore Punjabi speakers of the Pathana province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In fourth place, out of the total population of 1.5 crores, Balochistan has about 63,000 Punjabi speakers. Now we come to Eastern Punjab. Approximately 32.5 crores of the population are in Eastern Punjab, 30 crores in Haryana and 25 lakhs in Himachal Pradesh. The number of Punjabis who have migrated from Pakistan to other countries is about 12.5 crores. My Sikh friends tell us that among the Sikhs of Eastern Punjab, about 50 lakhs of the Sikhs who speak Punjabi have migrated to other countries. Now we can collect the figures of all these.
First of all, the population of the Pakistani state of Punjab is 14 crores, 1 crores in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 51 lakhs in Sindh and 50 lakhs in Kashmir and 63 thousand in Balochistan, this makes 16 crores 64 thousand and adding 1 crores of Pakistanis living abroad, this is 17 crores and 64 lakhs, i.e. a total of about 18 crores of Punjabis living in Pakistan. If we talk about India, the population of Punjab in India is 32 million, Haryana is 30 million, Himachal Pradesh is 75 million and 50 million living outside the country, this makes it 75 million. A large part of this population speaks Punjabi or understands Punjabi well. If we add the number of Pakistani and Indian Punjabis, it becomes about 250 million. Now the total population of Pakistan is formed in this region, the total population of Punjabis is formed. In this, we have not included those Punjabis who left Pakistan or Eastern Punjab and went to other parts of India for business or jobs, which include states like Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra etc. We have not included those people in this. Let us see that out of the total population of Pakistan, 176.4 million are Punjabi speakers, which makes up 71% of the Pakistani population. Pakistan is actually Punjabistan, because the population of Punjabi speakers is the largest here. The rest of the people are only 29%. Even if the entire population of the remaining three states is taken together, it still does not constitute even a third of the population of Punjab. This is the reason why political parties target Punjab in elections, because even if someone wins 75% of the total seats in Punjab and loses 25%, he will win a total of 53% of the seats in Pakistan. The leader of that party will form his government comfortably and no one can stop him from becoming the Prime Minister. The importance of Punjab in Pakistan is the same as that of UP in India. The Prime Minister of India becomes only if he gets the maximum number of seats in UP, because there are a lot of seats there, perhaps around the end of the 80s, we can say that if Punjab had remained united, then the Punjabis with a population of 30-35 crores would have had special importance in the Indian subcontinent.
