Foreign tourists to Pakistan more than triple since 2013

[Akbar]

You think 1.75 million is a "pathetically low number"?

1.7 million they spent in Hera Mandi, Lawho re , Bundjab

[Traveller]

What is "Indic" and what Indic culture is being promoted?

Urdu is Pakistan's national language and lingua franca, chosen so that no provincial language could take precedence over another.

Pakistan is a federation; so Pashto has official status in Northern Balochistan, KPK and FATA.

Even though i'm from Punjab, when I studied in Sialkot; most schools had mandatory classes for a second language that had to be provincial - Pashto was one of the most popular course. Some of my friends who took these classes, despite being non-Pashtun speak Pashto.

KPK alone is ahead of Afghanistan in terms of Pashto literature, music, poetry, and etc... so you should be worried more about Afghanistan.

I'm a Pakistani Pashtun and you really sugarcoated the situation of our language in Pakistan.

Firstly, Urdu is not a neutral language that belongs to no ethnicity. It is the language of North Indian muslims and Karachiwal muhajirs(who have their origins in North India). Punjabi is very similar to Urdu and Punjabis use it a lot so you can say that it also belongs to Punjabis as well. It's definitely not the neutral language you made it out to be. I respect the role of Urdu as a lingua franca in Pakistan due to how widespread it is but Pakistan's native languages(Urdu is not native to Pakistan) should be given national status alongside Urdu.

Secondly, Pashto has ZERO official status in any pashtun territory of Pakistan and that is a legimate concern.

Thirdly, I do not know what kind of school you studied in but I've never heard of any language besided Urdu and English being a required subject in Pakistan.

Fourthly, Afghanistan is way ahead of Pakhtunkhwa in producing written pashto materials. Pakistani pashtuns have a greater population but we only produce a fraction of the Pashto literature Afghans produce. Personally over 90% of the written pashto(written in the proper pashto script) I come across is written by Afghan pashtuns despite them being only 30-40% of the total pashtun population. As for music, I'm not sure but we(Pakistani Pashtuns) probably do produce more of that simply by virtue of our greater population.

[Muhammad Gujjar]

1.7 million they spent in Hera Mandi, Lawho re , Bundjab

Get a life you obsessed troll and hop off my ****.