The Muhajir people (also spelled Mahajir and Mohajir) (, ) 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 India, who settled in urban Sindh. 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 native language is Urdu, an Indo-Iranian language in the Indo-Aryan language branch of the Indo-European language family. Therefore, making them the third largest Urdu-speaking ethnicity in South Asia. Muhajirs also speak several other languages, including Hindi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, and Malayalam. 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. Etymology The Urdu term muhājir () comes from the Arabic muhājir (), meaning an "immigrant", or "emigrant". 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’. This term was popularized in Pakistan by the 1951 census, although its earliest uses date back to Partition. Definition Among historians, anthropologists, and the Muhajirs themselves, there is some debate as to who exactly qualifies as a Muhajir. The most widely used definition is: Migrated to Pakistan from Muslim minority provinces of the subcontinent at the time of partition, Is not considered as belonging to any of the nationalities of Pakistan, neither Punjabi, nor Pashtun, nor Sindhi, nor Baloch, Migrated from those areas of East Punjab whose language and culture were not Punjabi. The second clause of this definition has been rejected by many including the cricketer-politician Imran Khan, who considers himself a half muhajir because of his Pashtun mother's migration to