Though the official controversial 2017 census of Karachi, which has historically hosted the country's largest Muhajir population, has been challenged by most of Sindh's political parties.

[31] Being a multi-linguistic group of people, the Muhajirs speak different languages natively depending on their ethnicity and ancestral history.

[23] In Sindh, those that speak Urdu as first language mostly migrated from Delhi, United Provinces, Hyderabad Deccan, Bombay, Ajmer, Bhopal, Bihar, Karnal including from other regions with other native tongues who eventually assimilated into the community amid nation building.

[24] Most of them are settled in the towns and cities of Pakistan mainly those of Urban Sindh, such as Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas and Sukkur.

[79][80] UNHCR estimates 14 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.

[90] 1.1 million Muslims from Uttar Pradesh, Bombay Presidency, Delhi, and Rajasthan settled in their place; half in Karachi and the rest across Sindh's other cities.

[92] As Karachi was the capital of the new nation, educated urban migrants from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bombay, Bihar, and Hyderabad Deccan preferred it as their site of settlement for better access to employment opportunities.

[84] In 1952, a joint passport system was introduced for travel purposes between the two countries which made it possible for Indian Muslims to legally move to Pakistan.

In 1959, the International Labour Organization (ILO) published a report stating that between the period of 1951–1956, around 650,000 Muslims from India relocated to West Pakistan.

In June 1995, Pakistan's interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, informed the National Assembly that between the period of 1973–1994, as many as 800,000 visitors came from India on valid travel documents, of which only 3,393 stayed.

According to a November 1995 statement of Riaz Khokhar, the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, the number of cross-border marriages has declined from 40,000 a year in the 1950s and 1960s to barely 300 annually.

[108] The members of the movement who are now Muhajirs granted the money to preserve the Ottoman Empire but were unable to prevent its decline; it was the biggest political eminence in pre-Muhajir history.

[111][112] It was initiated in the 19th century when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the grandson of the Khwaja Fakhruddin, the Vizier of Akbar Shah II,[113] expounded the cause of Muslim autonomy in Aligarh.

[120] The Muhajirs, upon their arrival in Pakistan, soon joined the Punjabi-dominated ruling elite of the newborn country due to their high rates of education and urban background.

[121][119] Although the Muhajirs were, socially, urbane and liberal, they sided with the country's religious political parties such as Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP) because of their non affiliation with any particular ethnic group.

[123] Muhajirs dominated the bureaucracy of Sindh in the early years of the Pakistani state, largely due to their higher levels of educational attainment.

[92] Prior to the partition, Hindus dominated the professions of lawyers, teachers, and tradesmen in Sindh and the vacancies they left behind were filled up by the Muhajirs.

[85] Many upper class Muhajirs people had higher education and civil service experience from working for the British Raj and Muslim princely states.

[85] Gradually, as education became more widespread, Sindhis and Pashtuns, as well as other ethnic groups, started to take their fair share of the pool in the bureaucracy.

[129] By the time of Pakistan's first military regime (Ayub Khan, 1958), the Muhajirs had already begun to lose their influence in the ruling elite, especially after he changed the federal capital of Karachi to Islamabad.

[89][130][131] Ayub slowly began to pull non-muhajirs into the mainstream areas of the economy and politics, coupled with completely ousting Muhajirs from the ruling elite.

[132] The relation was further deteriorated when the quota system, revived and expanded by the 1962 constitution, increased the number of seats in professional colleges for students from backward areas which was anathema to the middle-class literate Muhajirs.

[119] From the 1970s and onwards, Bhutto implemented a series of policies in Sindh that the Urdu-speaking population viewed as an assault on their political and economic rights as well as cultural identity.

[148][149] The movement was particularly strong among Karachi's middle and lower-middle-classes who clashed with state forces and political opponents in deadly gun battles and destroyed state-owned plants.

[150][128] On 5 July 1977, Chief of Army Staff General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq led a coup d'état against Bhutto and imposed martial law, due to the rising unrest in the country.

[154] APMSO created several militant cells, such as Black Tigers and Nadeem Commandos, to counter the heavily armed Thunder squad of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba.

[165] Even after Musharraf's fall from power, MQM continued to dominate Muhajir politics until 2016 when it broke up into four factions and collapsed.

[167] Despite tough opposition from PPP and TLP, PTI managed to bag the popular vote en masses during the 2018 Pakistani general elections, though with a lower voter turnout.

[170] A 2019 study by Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center found that Muhajir women have the highest employment rate and monthly income among all major ethnic groups of Pakistan.

[190] Muhajir women (mainly from Northern India) wear sari,[191] which is an un-stitched stretch of woven fabric arranged over the body like a robe.