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Race as such plays little part in defining regional or group identity in Pakistan, and no ideal racial type is accepted by all Pakistanis. The population is a complex mixture of indigenous peoples, many racial types having been introduced by successive waves of migrations from the northwest, as well as by internal migrations across the subcontinent of India. Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Pathans (Pashtuns), and Mughals came from the northwest and spread across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, while the Arabs conquered Sindh. All left their mark on the population and culture of the land. During the long period of Muslim rule, immigrants from the Middle East were brought in and installed as members of the ruling oligarchy. It became prestigious to claim descent from them, and many members of the landed gentry and of upper-class families are either actually or putatively descended from such immigrants. In 1947, when Pakistan and India became independent, there was another massive migration, of a different character, when millions of Muslim refugees were uprooted from different parts of India and settled in Pakistan; an equal number of Hindus were uprooted from Pakistan and driven across to India. This development further complicated the racial mixture of the population of the various regions of Pakistan.
By the early 1990s Pakistan's population was divided into five ethnic groups, defined broadly. The Punjabis constitute the majority, with more than 55 percent of the population; the Sindhis account for another 20 percent, the Pathans and the mujahirs for about 10 percent each, and the Balochs for about 5 percent. There are subgroups within each of these five categories. The Arains, Rajputs, and Jats—all Punjabis—regard themselves as ethnically distinct. Some groups overlap the five categories: for instance, there are Punjabi Pathans as well as Hazarvi Pathans. Some smaller groups, such as the Brohis in Sindh and the Seraikis in Punjab, are also ethnically distinct.
Pakistan is in general linguistically heterogeneous, and no single language can be said to be common to the whole population. Each of its principal languages has a strong regional focus, although statistics show some languages to be distributed between various provinces because administrative boundaries cut across linguistic regions. The picture is also complicated by the fact that, especially in Sindh, there are substantial numbers of Urdu- and Punjabi-speaking immigrants (muhajirs) who moved from India following partition. The languages claimed as mother tongue include Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, and Brahui.
Urdu is the youngest of the nation's languages and is not indigenous to Pakistan; it is very similar to Hindi, an official language of India. Although the two languages have a common base, in its literary form Urdu emphasizes words of Persian and Arabic origin, whereas Hindi emphasizes words of Sanskrit origin. Urdu is written in a modified version of the Persian script (written from right to left), whereas Hindi is written in Devanagari script from left to right. Because it is preeminently the language of the educated Muslims of northern India, including the Punjab, Urdu has strong associations with Muslim nationalism; hence the ideological significance of Urdu in Pakistani politics.
The 1956 constitution prescribed the use of English for official purposes for 20 years, and the 1962 constitution made the period indefinite. The 1973 constitution, however, designated a 15-year transition period to Urdu, after which English would no longer be used for official purposes. English is spoken by only a small percentage of the people. Urdu is the mother tongue of only a small percentage of the population of Pakistan; it is taught in the schools along with the regional languages.
Punjabi has its own script, Gurmukhi, but it is mainly used in India. In Pakistan, Punjabi is mainly spoken rather than written; it is also a predominantly rural rather than an urban language. Urdu, rather than Punjabi, is the first language taught in schools in Punjab, so that every educated Punjabi reads and writes Urdu. There was a movement for the promotion of the Punjabi language in the 1980s and '90s, and some Punjabi literature is being published using the Urdu script; among the works published are Punjabi classics that have hitherto been available in Gurmukhi script or preserved in oral tradition.
Sindhi is derived from the Virachada dialect of Prakrit; it has fewer dialects than Punjabi. It is written in a special variant of the Arabic script. Most of the educated middle class in Sindh were Hindu, and their departure to India in 1947 had a traumatic effect on Sindhi culture. Vigorous efforts were therefore directed toward a recovery and preservation of the rich Sindhi literary and cultural heritage. Large numbers of Urdu-speaking refugees settled in Sindh, and they now constitute the majority of the population of its larger towns. As a consequence, the movement for the promotion of Sindhi language and culture was sometimes expressed as opposition toward Urdu. The Sindhi population feared that their language and culture would be overrun by the language and culture of the muhajir community; this fear led to the language riots of 1972 and to the government's decision to grant special status to the Sindhi language. The rise of militant ethnic politics in the 1980s can be traced to this decision.
Pashto, the language of the Pathans (Pashtuns, or Pakhtuns) of the North-West Frontier Province, has no written literary traditions although it has a rich oral tradition. There are two major dialect patterns within which the various individual dialects may be classified; these are Pakhto, which is the northern (Peshawar) variety, and the softer Pashto spoken in southern areas. As in the Punjab, Urdu is the language taught in schools, and educated Pathans read and write Urdu. Again, as in the case of Punjabi, there was a movement for developing the written language in Persian script and increasing the usage of Pashto. From 1979 onward, as many as 3.5 million largely Pashto-speaking refugees arrived in Pakistan from Afghanistan. While most were accommodated in refugee camps in and around Peshawar, a number of them settled in Karachi, further complicating the city's ethnic and linguistic picture.
The two main spoken languages of Balochistan are Balochi and Brahui. Makrani is an important dialect of Balochi; it is spoken in Makran, the southern region of Balochistan, bordering on Iran.
