It is disturbing to the average mind of Lahore when one learns that nearly 60 per cent of the old walled city population consists of original ‘Afghan refugees’ here since the days of the Russian invasion of their country.

Over the years they have been hired by traders who themselves came over in the 1947 Partition and ‘illegally’ set up businesses. These traders have knocked down a majority of the ancient buildings and all the walls and replaced them with ‘concrete monsters’. Our bureaucrats are blind to that for well-known reasons. These Afghans initially worked for less than half the average pay, then slowly set up their own businesses, and a few now even own huge shops in Gulberg and the DHA shopping plazas.

The Afghans also spread out to large dwellings opposite the airport and other housing areas as they come up. One official claims they might even be approximately over 10 per cent of Lahore’s population. Sounds unbelievable. But then the children of these Afghans now speak fluent Punjabi and their offspring know only about Lahore. They are Lahoris first and Afghans next. This raises the question we want to discuss in this piece.

Many years ago the famous Dr Prof Saleem Kaul of Peshawar University speaking at a conference put forward the proposition that ‘the coming of thousands of Afghans is a welcome sign, for it is merely the continuation of the Aryans moving eastwards’. His assertion was part of our history, a never-ending story.

But then do we really understand our ‘real’ past? Just who are we? As the inhabitants of the old walled city, as also of the ever-expanding outer human habitation, mix forming a curious amalgam of the ancient and the modern.

It is critical to study the whole picture of the past. The coming of the ‘Aryans’ to the Indian sub-continent refers to a group of people from the west and north-west across the mountain passes. They are referred to as Indo-Aryan peoples and are an ethno-linguistic group from Central Asia. They moved into the western portions of the sub-continent, now Pakistan, initially approximately in the 1,750-2,500 BC period, bringing with them a variety of Indo-Aryan languages and a Vedic culture. (See Stanislav Grigoriev’s ‘Studies of Cultural Genesis p3-22)

Before them the sub-continent, including Lahore, the Dravidians culture prevailed, and remains so today in the ancient Baluch Mehrgarh civilisation region’s Brahui speaking people since 12,000 BC. A similar Dravidian portion of the sub-continent is the south of India with its multiple Dravidian-based languages. The north of the sub-continent has Aryan-influenced languages.

The very term “Aryan” originates from the Sanskrit word “Arya,” meaning “noble,” and was used to self-identify by these groups. Another version of the origins of the word ‘Arya’ is that they originated from ancient Iran and from a variety of Caucasian Steppe of European origins. Some scholars even go as far as to claim that the Aryans were of Celtic and Germanic origin.

But the accepted version now is that the word ‘Arya’ is a continuation of the word ‘Iran’, and hence ‘Arya’. On a scientific basis the DNA of the northern sub-continentals, more so Pakistanis, especially the Punjabis of Lahore, originates from firstly, south Indian hunter gatherers from Africa, secondly, from initially farmers originating from the Iranian Plateau, and lastly, from Eurasian Steppes. Over thousands of years these people mixed and have traces of early Neanderthal peoples.

The racial traces, especially skin colours, are merely the off shoot of location. As people moved to areas further from the equator with lower UV levels, the off shoots over thousands of years had lighter skins. In Pakistan this can very clearly be seen in the difference between people living on the Makran coast of Balochistan to those living in the mountains of Chitral. In origin they are the same.

The Aryans, or Indo-Aryans, were a pastoralist people. The movement of these ‘nomadic’ Central Asians has best been explained by Hugh Kennedy Trevaskis in his classic The Land of Five Rivers in the following manner: “While a civilisation based on agriculture was growing in northern India, the pressure of the every-increasing nomadic population of Central Asia on grazing ground, which were becoming drier, grew to a breaking point”.

The conclusion of the historian George Wells, as also J. L. Myres, was that: “It was inevitable that the nomadic people and the settled people should clash. The nomadic people were ‘hard barbarians’ while the settled people were ‘soft and effeminate’. A similar example we see that the settled civilisations of Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia were run over by Arabian tribes from the deserts.

Mind you the nomadic tribal collection as depicted in the ‘Rigveda’ and the ‘Dasarajna’ (Battle of Ten Kings) on The Ravi for possession of Khziri port of ancient Lahore, is a Vedic example of one such battle.

But mind you the Aryans – our forefathers - did not come as an army, but a constant small unrelenting drizzle. They did not carry away their booty but settled down on the conquered lands. The discovery of the Khyber Pass by these nomads opened up an era of invasions.

This migration and the resultant cultural development led to the emergence of the caste system and the foundational texts of Hinduism - the Vedas. In short Hinduism was born in the land of Pakistan, and over thousands of years moved eastwards as the caste system was rejected in the western portions of the land. The idea of Pakistan can also be explained in this fact.

Their arrival is associated with the resultant Vedic culture, which originates from the Zoroastrian culture of gods of nature which developed into Hinduism. Just to remind that when the Bhandaras dynasty – known as the Chach Dynasty (631-671 AD) - took over Lahore they built their temple where today is ‘Paniwala Talaab’. That Mahmud the Turko-Afghan invader demolished.

Researchers have pinpointed that the caste system of Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras emerged with the Aryans, marking a significant social structure in the sub-continent.

Current evidence suggests that the Indo-Aryan language and culture spread through migrations, rather than a large-scale invasion, coexisting with and influencing the earlier Harappan civilisation, which was Dravidians.

One important feature of the Aryans was that they were basically a ‘moving camp’ and in such a camp the word and power of the patriarch was supreme, and it is that structure that continues to this day. Increasing urbanisation and education is denting that structure.

This manner of human movement gave rise to individual tribal gods or deities, all of them based in one way or another on the then prevailing belief system of Zoroastrianism that prevailed in the Iranian and Central Asian Sogdian areas.

The term‘Airya’ appears in ‘Airyanam Waejo’ is described in the ‘vesta’ as the homeland of the early Iranians, said to have been created as “the first and best of places and habitations” by the god Ahura Mazda. It was referred to in Manichean Sogdian as ‘Aryan Wezan’, and in Old Persian as ‘Arynam Waijah’.

These were the roots of Hinduism as it unfolded in the land of the Punjab, where the ancient Dravidians were classified as ‘inferior’ and one major determinant was skin colour, as also family strength.

Our ancient origins and our elder’s original location, our racial appearance changes that have taken place, our multiple belief systems and our view of our neighbours are all fashioned by our history. The more we study them the better. It is very sad that our education budget from the 20 per cent Mr Jinnah wished has collapsed to 0.9pc and is falling. A reflection of our real rulers.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2025