Gandhara was related to Indian culture, not the Pashtun culture, they are different people from us.
These lines are taken from
The Discovery of India by
J.L. Nehru
The Variety and Unity of India
"The diversity of India is tremendous; it is obvious; it lies on
the surface and anybody can see it. It concerns itself with phy-
sical appearances as well as with certain mental habits and traits.
There is little in common, to outward seeming, between the
Pathan of the North-West and the Tamil in the far South. Their
racial stocks are not the same, though there may be common
strands running through them; they differ in face and figure,
food and clothing, and, of course, language. In the North-
western Frontier Province there is already the breath of Central
Asia, and many a custom there, as in Kashmir, reminds one of
the countries on the other side of the Himalayas. Pathan popu-
lar dances are singularly like Russian Cossack dancing.
Yet,
with all these differences, there is no mistaking the impress of
India on the Pathan, as this is obvious on the Tamil. This is
not surprising, for these border lands, and indeed Afghanistan
also, were united with India for thousands of years. The old
Turkish and other races who inhabited Afghanistan and parts
of Central Asia before the advent of Islam were largely Bud-
dhists, and earlier still, during the period of the Epics,
Hindus. The frontier area was one of the principal centres of
old Indian culture and it abounds still with ruins of monu-
ments and monasteries and, especially, of the great university
of Taxila, which was at the height of its fame two thousand
years ago, attracting students from all over India as well as
different parts of Asia. Changes of religion made a difference,
but could not change entirely the mental backgrounds which
the people of those areas had developed.
The Pathan and the Tamil are two extreme examples; the
others lie somewhere in between. All of them have their dis-
tinctive features, all of them have still more the distinguishing
mark of India. It is fascinating to find how the Bengalis, the
Marathas, the Gujratis, the Tamils, the Andhras, the Oriyas,
the Assamese, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the
Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs, and the great
central block comprising the Hindustani-speaking people, have
retained their peculiar characteristics for hundreds of years,
have still more or less the same virtues and failings of which
old tradition or record tells us, and yet have been throughout
these ages distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage
and the same set of moral and mental qualities. There was
something living and dynamic about this heritage which showed
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itself in ways of living and a philosophical attitude to life and
its problems. Ancient India, like ancient China, was a world in
itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things.
Foreign influences poured in and often influenced that culture
and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately
to an attempt to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity
has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.
That unity was not conceived as something imposed from out-
side, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was
something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of
belief and custom was practised and every variety acknowledged
and even encouraged."