Mahajir (Pakistan)
Mahajirs/Mohajir/Muhajir (مہاجر) constitute about 8 percent of the population. They are Muslims who settled in Pakistan after the end of British India in 1947. Unlike other cultural ethnic groups of Pakistan, they do not have a tribe-based cultural identity. Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, is their native tongue, though many muhajirs speak other languages such as Gujarati, Memoni, Marwari etc as their mother tongue. Mohajirs were the vanguard of the Pakistan Movement, which advocated the partition of British India in order to create the independent nation of Pakistan for Indian Muslims. After the partition, a large number of Muslims migrated from various urban centers of India to live in the new nation of Pakistan. These migrants later identified themselves as mohajirs.
مہاجر | |
|---|---|
| Total population | |
| 15 million (2017 estimate)[1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Karachi, Hyderabad and in many other large cities in Pakistan | |
| Languages | |
| Urdu[2] (Gujarati) (Memoni)[3][4][5][3][4][5] Rajasthani[6] East Punjabi[7] | |
| Religion | |
| Islam (mostly Sunni, minority Shia) Christianity[8] |
A large number of Mohajirs settled in the cities of Sindh Province, particularly Karāchi and Hyderābād. Today they remain mostly urban.
References
change- ↑ Zakaria, Rafiq (2004). The man who divided India: an insight into Jinnah's leadership and its aftermath, with a new chapter on Musharraf's do or die leadership. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. ISBN 8179911454. OCLC 271725680.
- ↑ Ahmed, Feroz. "Ethnicity and politics: The rise of Muhajir separatism." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 8.1_and_2 (1988): 33-45.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Allah Rakhio Butt (1 January 1998). Papers on Sindhi Language & Linguistics. Institute of Sindhology, University of Sindh. ISBN 978-969-405-050-8.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Organiser. Bharat Prakashan. July 1989.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Barbara A. West (19 May 2010). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Infobase Publishing. pp. 561–. ISBN 978-1-4381-1913-7.
- ↑ The gazetteer of West Pakistan: the former province of Sind including Khairpur State. Gazetteer Cell, Board of Revenue. 1968.
- ↑ Andrew Wilder (1999). The Pakistani Voter: Electoral Politics and Voting Behaviour in the Punjab. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-579072-6.
- ↑ "Pakistani Christians in search of a new homeland".