West Punjab
At Independence there was a Muslim majority in West Punjab with significant Hindu and Sikh minority. Nearly all of these minorities left West Punjab for India, to be replaced by large numbers of Muslims fleeing from the opposite direction. The official language of West Punjab was Urdu but most of the population spoke Punjabi using the Shahmukhi script. The linguist George Abraham Grierson in his multi volume Linguistic Survey of India (1904–1928) considered the various dialects up to then called "Western Punjabi", spoken in North, West, and South of Lahore in what is now Pakistani Punjab, as constituting instead a distinct language from Punjabi. (The local dialect of Lahore is the Majhi dialect of Punjabi, which has long been the basis of standard literary Punjabi.) Grierson proposed to name this putative language "Lahnda", and he dubbed as "Southern Lahnda" the coherent dialect cluster now known as Saraiki spoken in Multan Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur division and "North Lahnda" now known as Potwari spoken in Rawalpindi division and "Western Lahnda" now known as Hindko spoken in the regions bordering Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Shaista Nuzhat
Nuzhat has worked to promote Punjabi language, literature, art and culture. As a result of her efforts, the Punjab Legislative Assembly passed a bill for the establishment of an institution named the Punjab Institute of Language, Art & Culture, which started functioning in 2005 in a rented building at Shadman Colony, Lahore, as part of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Youth Affairs, with Nuzhat as the founding Director. The Institute brought together Punjabi writers, poets, and journalists in the Punjabi Complex, at 01-Qaddafi Stadium, Ferozpur Road, Lahore, with the support of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, the Ex. Chief Minister, Punjab. PILAC has been functioning from this complex since 2007, after an inauguration by Elahi. Nuzhat also started Pakistan's first Punjabi FM-radio channel named FM-Pechanway (FM-95) Punjab Rang, under the umbrella of PILAC, broadcasting from the Punjabi Complex.