Portal:Muhajir

Muhajir Train

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. The term "Muhajirs" refers to those Muslim migrants from post-partition India, who settled in urban Sindh, while muslim migrants who settled in other parts of Pakistan dropped the term. 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.

The group's most widely spoken and culture language is Urdu, an Indo-Iranian language in the Indo-Aryan language branch of the Indo-European language family. Muhajirs also speak several other languages natively, including Hindi, Memoni, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Malayalam, and Tamil.

Muhajirs are the fifth-largest ethnic group of Pakistan. The total population of the Muhajir people worldwide is estimated to be around 15 million, and this figure was supported by the official census in 2017 which showed the Muhajir population to be around 14.7 million. The official population census of Karachi, currently with the largest Muhajir population, has been challenged by most political parties of Sindh. Some organizations including independent ones estimate the muhajir population to be around 30 million.

The Muhajirs are the most educated, and affluent ethnic group in Pakistan. Because of this, they constituted a influential community in the earlier years of post-partition Pakistan. During the first military dictatorship of Pakistan, the political power of muhajir at centre declined and this decline continued into the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Today, muhajirs have lost most of their political influence at federal level, although they continue to dominate the politics of Urban Sindh and the economy of Pakistan. (Full article...)