Muhajir (Pakistan)
The Muhajir people (also spelled Mahajir and Mohajir) (Urdu: مہاجر, lit. 'Immigrant') are Muslim immigrants of various ethnic groups and regional origins, and their descendants, who migrated from various regions of India after the Partition of India to settle in the newly independent state of Pakistan.[10][11] The community includes those immigrants' descendants, most of whom are settled in Karachi and other parts of urban Sindh. [12] [13] The Muhajir community also includes stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh who migrated to Pakistan after 1971 following the secession of East Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War.
This article is about the social group in Pakistan. For other uses, see Muhajir (disambiguation).The total population of the Muhajir people worldwide is estimated to be around 15 million, and the overwhelming majority of this figure (14.7 million) is located in Pakistan, according to the 2017 Pakistani census. The official census of Karachi, which has historically hosted the country's largest Muhajir population, has been challenged by most of Sindh's political parties. Some independent organizations have estimated that the Muhajirs number around 30 million people.
Etymology
The Urdu term muhājir (Urdu: مہاجر) comes from the Arabic muhājir (Arabic: مهاجر), meaning an "immigrant",[14][15][16] or "emigrant".[17] This term is associated in early Islamic history to the migration of Muslims and connotes ‘separation, migration, flight, specifically the flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina’.[18][19] This term was popularized in Pakistan by the 1951 census, although its earliest uses date back to Partition.[20]
Demographics
Origins
Most of the muhajirs who settled in the Sindh province of Pakistan came from the present-day Indian states of Central Provinces, Berar, Bombay, United Provinces, Haryana, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi, while others were from princely states of Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Hyderabad, Baroda, Kutch, and the Rajputana Agency.[21][22][23]
Population
Muhajirs, worldwide, have a population of over 15 million.[24] Muhajirs are mostly settled in Pakistan and currently are the fifth-largest ethnic group of Pakistan, with a population of around 14.7-30 million.[25]
The muhajir population figures, especially in Pakistan, have faced many controversies mainly due to the controversial 2017 census of Pakistan. The muhajir population figure has been rejected by most major political parties of Sindh including MQM-P,[26] PSP,[27] and PPP.[28][29] Estimates of Muhajir nationalist organizations range from 22 million[30] to around 30 million.[31]
Historically, muhajirs have constituted above 7% population of West Pakistan (3.5% in Pakistan as a whole).[32]
Languages
Being a multi-linguistic group of people, the Muhajirs speak different languages natively depending on their ethnicity and ancestral history.[33][34][35] Over a period of a few decades, these disparate groups sharing the common experience of migration, and political opposition to the military regime of Ayub Khan and his civilian successor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, evolved or assimilated into a distinct ethnic grouping.[36]