Gandhara Hindko Board Appeals For Funding

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Aug, 2025) A literary and cultural organization, Gandhara Hindko Board, has appealed to the chief ministers of all provinces to provide financial support from their discretionary funds to help continue its mission of promoting regional languages.

In a statement, issued here on Sunday, Muhammad Ziauddin, General Secretary of the board, pointed out that the organization was launched in Peshawar in 1993 to work for the promotion of the Hindko language and its associated culture.

Later, he recalled, the work was expanded to include several other languages spoken in the province and other regions of the country.

“The Gandhara Hindko Academy, operating under the Gandhara Hindko Board for the past 10 years, has been working for the promotion of Hindko as well as other languages spoken in different parts of the country,” explained Ziauddin, a research scholar of the Hindko language and a documentation expert by profession.

He said the board and the academy had worked on languages including Hindko, Pashto, Gojri, Kohistani, Khowar, Dameli, Ushojo, Kalkoti, Gawarbati, and Yidgha in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; Punjabi, Saraiki, and Pothohari in Punjab; Sindhi and urdu in Sindh; Balochi, Brahui, and Pashto in Balochistan; Shina, Balti, and Wakhi in Gilgit-Baltistan; and Kashmiri and Pahari in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Ziauddin said the Hindko board and academy had successfully organized seven international Hindko conferences and nine regional language conferences, where researchers from various linguistic backgrounds presented academic papers.

“These papers were not only archived by the Academy but also published in book form,” he elaborated.

Discussing the work further, he said the academy was publishing over 15 literary journals in different languages, which had received appreciation at regional, national, and international levels while books and publications by the literary bodies had crossed the 500 mark.

He recalled that the then chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Letters, Dr Yousuf Khushk, during his visit to the Gandhara Hindko Academy in Peshawar, had praised its work and termed it a “state-of-the-art” institution. The Pakistan Academy of Letters has also provided modest annual grants to the board.

However, Ziauddin lamented that although the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had previously allocated funds for the academy in its Annual Development Programme twice, it had not provided any funding over the past three years.

“As a result, the Academy is facing a severe financial crisis,” he said, lamenting that no finances had been provided by the KP government since June 30, 2022.

Ziauddin appealed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sardar Ali Amin Gandapur to personally intervene and allocate discretionary funds to support the Gandhara Hindko Board.

He also urged Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti, Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Gulbar Khan, and AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq to provide financial assistance to the Board from their discretionary funds so that the Gandhara Hindko Academy may continue preserving and promoting Pakistan’s diverse linguistic heritage.