"What are you?" is usually one of the first questions that comes up in conversation when two "British Asians" meet for the first time. This means, "What is your religion and/or ethnicity?"

Being a Hindu whose mother tongue is Punjabi, I call myself a HP, which stands for Hindu Punjabi. I would have thought that this is quite straightforward to understand. However over the years I have come across so many people who have totally incorrect ideas of what HP means, and have had to explain it to many people (particularly Gujarati Hindus). I am writing this to help remove mistaken ideas about the definition of HP that may exist amongst fellow Hindus.

Put simply a Hindu Punjabi is a person who is Punjabi (linguistically and culturally) who follows the Hindu religion. Being Punjabi is independent of religion, and being Hindu is independent of the language you speak. One can be of a different religion and still be a Punjabi, and one can speak any language and still be a Hindu.

Some Gujarati folk I have come across (sorry to keep mentioning Gujaratis, but they are the culprits here) have the laughable view that all Hindus are Gujarati and all Punjabis are Sikh, therefore a HP must be a person who has one parent as a Gujarati speaking Hindu and the other a Punjabi Sikh. More commonly, many people hold the view that a Hindu Punjabi is a person who follows mixed Sikh and Hindu religion.

Both of these views are incorrect. They make the mistake of thinking that Punjabi = Sikh. There are in fact more Punjabi-speaking Hindus than Sikhs, and more Punjabi-speaking Muslims than either. It should also be noted that most of "Punjabi culture", such as the music (bhangra) and festivals (including Vaisakhi and Lohri) have specifically Hindu roots. So to equate Punjabi with Sikh, as many Hindus in Britain do, is totally erroneous.

So there you have it. Hindu Punjabi means a person who is 100% Hindu and 100% Punjabi, not half and half. Next time somebody says they are HP; you have no excuse not to know what they mean.