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.
Punjabi nationalism
Beside the fact that, in 1800 century, religious ratio of Punjabi people in Punjab was 48% Muslim Punjabis, 43% Hindu Punjabis, 8% Sikh Punjabis and 1% others, but due to attraction of the various tribes, castes and the inhabitants of the Punjab into a broader common "Punjabi" identity and uniting by natural affinity of "Punjabi Nationalism", Punjab was a secular regime, Punjabi was a secular nation and after throwing out the Muslim Mughal invaders of Punjab from Delhi, India and Muslim Afghan invaders of Punjab from Kabul, Afghanistan, a Sikh Punjabi, Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the ruler of Punjab, which provided the boost to the already initiated Punjabi nationalism.