Languages | |
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Bhojpuri, Maithili, Magahi, Angika, Bajjika, Urdu, English Caribbean English and Caribbean Hindustani (in Caribbean) Fiji Hindi, Pidgin Fijian, and English (in Fiji) South African English, Afrikaans, and Naitali Bhojpuri (in South Africa) French, English, Mauritian Creole, and Mauritian Bhojpuri (in Mauritius) Seychellois Creole, French, and English (in Seychelles) | |
Religion | |
Predominantly: Hinduism Minority: Islam, Christianity |
Bihari diaspora are the people from Bihar who resides outside of India.
During the partition of India in 1947, many Biharis moved to both West Pakistan and East Pakistan, where they were counted among other Muhajirs and still are in present-day Pakistan. About one million Urdu speakers moved to what was then East Bengal adjacent to their Bihar province in eastern India. [1]
When East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh in December 1971, 83,000 Biharis (58,000 former civil servants and military personnel) wanting to leave being ethnic Urdu-speakers, members of divided families and 25,000 hardship cases were evacuated to Pakistan. By 1974, 108,000 had been transferred to Pakistan (mainly by air); by 1981, about 163,000. The remaining Biharis of East Bengal were left behind and found themselves unwelcomed in both countries. Pakistan did not wish to accept the Biharis left in the newly formed Bangladesh as it saw itself a struggling to manage thousands of Afghan refugees at that time, [2] while Bangladeshis scorned the ethnic Biharis for having supported and sided with the West Pakistan during the war and preferring their native Urdu over the Bengali Language Movement.
With little or no legal negotiation about offering the Biharis Pakistani citizenship or safe conduit back home to their native Bihar in India, the Biharis (called "stranded Pakistanis" by some Bangladeshi politicians) have remained stateless for 33 years. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has not addressed the plight of the Biharis. An estimated 600,000 Biharis live in 66 camps in 13 regions across Bangladesh, and an equal number have acquired Bangladeshi citizenship. In 1990, a small number of Biharis were allowed to immigrate to Pakistan.
Pakistan has reiterated that as the successor state of East Pakistan, Bangladesh should accept the Biharis as full citizens. Pakistani politicians and government officials have refused to accept these nearly 300,000 stranded Pakistanis of Bihari origin due to inability to absorb such a large number of immigrants at the moment.
In May 2008, a Bangladeshi court ruled that Biharis who were either minors in 1971 or born after 1971 are Bangladeshi citizens and have the right to vote. [3] [4] As a result of the ruling, an estimated 150,000 of the 300,000 Biharis living in Bangladesh are eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship. [4] Although the court ruling explicitly said that the Biharis are eligible to register to vote in the December 2008 elections, the Election Commission closed its rolls in August 2008 without enrolling them. [5]
A large number of people from the Bhojpuri speaking regions of Bihar Province of British India travelled to various parts of the world in the 19th century to serve as indentured labours on sugarcane, cocoa, rice, and rubber plantations in the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles and Natal, South Africa.
A majority of Indo-Mauritians are Bihari Mauritians, so are a proportion of Indo-Seychellois (second largest, since South Indians form a majority of the country's ethnic Indians) as well as a portion of Indian South Africans (fourth largest subgroup in the country after Gujaratis, Tamils and Telugus). [6] Most of the Mauritian Prime Ministers or Presidents were Indo-Mauritians of Bihari descent. [7] Many Indo-Caribbeans are of Bhojpuri descent [8] or hail from the Awadh region in Uttar Pradesh. [9]
Bangladesh is the eighth-most populated country in the world with almost 2.2% of the world's population. As per the final results of the 2022 Census of Bangladesh, the country's population is 169,828,911.
Bihari languages is a group of the Indo-Aryan languages. The Bihari languages are mainly spoken in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, and also in Nepal. The most widely spoken languages of the Bihari group are Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili.
Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Bhojpur-Purvanchal region of India and the Terai region of Nepal. It is chiefly spoken in western Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and northwestern Jharkhand. It is an eastern Indo Aryan language and as of 2000 is spoken by about 5% of India's population. Bhojpuri is a descendant of Magadhi Prakrit and is closely related to Maithili, Magahi, Bangla, Odia, Assamese, etc. languages.
Indo-Caribbean or Indian-Caribbean people are Indian people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji Indian indentured laborers brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority are descendants of Indians or other South Asians who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century.
South Asian ethnic groups are an ethnolinguistic grouping of the diverse populations of South Asia, including the nations of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. While Afghanistan is variously considered to be a part of both Central Asia and South Asia, Afghans are generally not included among South Asians.
Bihari is a demonym given to the inhabitants of the Indian state of Bihar. Bihari people can be separated into three main Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic groups, Bhojpuris, Maithils and Magadhis. They are also further divided into a variety of hereditary caste groups. In Bihar today, the Bihari identity is seen as secondary to caste/clan, linguistic and religious identity but nonetheless is a subset of the larger Indian identity. Biharis can be found throughout India, and in the neighbouring countries of Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. During the Partition of India in 1947, many Bihari Muslims migrated to East Bengal. Bihari people are also well represented in the Muhajir people of Pakistan because of Partition.
Bihari Muslims are adherents of Islam who identify linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Biharis. They are geographically native to the region comprising the Bihar state of India, although there are significantly large communities of Bihari Muslims living elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent due to the Partition of British India in 1947, which prompted the community to migrate en masse from Bihar to East Pakistan.
Indo-Mauritians are Mauritians who trace their ethnic ancestry to the Republic of India or other parts of the Indian subcontinent in South Asia.
Stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh are Urdu-speaking Muslim migrants with homelands in present-day Bihar who settled in East Pakistan following the partition of India in 1947.
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is a koiné language mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as immigrants to the Caribbean from India as indentured laborers. It is closely related to Fiji Hindi and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in Mauritius and South Africa.
Fiji Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Fijians. It is an Eastern Hindi and Bihari language, considered to be a koiné language based on Awadhi that has also been subject to considerable influence by Bhojpuri, other Eastern Hindi and Bihari dialects, and Standard Hindi-Urdu. It has also borrowed some vocabulary from English, Fijian, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Malayalam. Many words unique to Fiji Hindi have been created to cater for the new environment that Indo-Fijians now live in. First-generation Indians in Fiji, who used the language as a lingua franca in Fiji, referred to it as Fiji Baat, "Fiji talk". It is closely related to Caribbean Hindustani and the Bhojpuri-Hindustani spoken in Mauritius and South Africa. It is largely mutually intellegible with the languages of Awadhi and Bhojpuri, as well as with the Bihari languages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhesh, Koshi and Lumbini, and the dialects of Eastern Hindi of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Lumbini, but differs in phonetics and vocabulary with Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu.
The Indian diaspora in Southeast Africa consists of approximately 3 million people of Indian origin. Some of this diaspora in Southeast Africa arrived in the 19th century from British India as indentured labourers, many of them to work on the Kenya–Uganda railway. Others had arrived earlier by sea as traders.
Anti-Bihari sentiment refers to discrimination against the migrant people of the State of Bihar. Bihar had slower economic growth than the rest of India in the 1990s which led to Biharis migrating to other parts of India in search of opportunities. Bihari migrant workers have been subject to a growing degree of hatred by the locals of those states because of their stereotyping as criminals, rapists and traitors. Moreover, the Biharis have been victimized due to the growing anti-Hindi imposition sentiment in non-Hindi states owing to the Central government agencies excluding regional languages in many national exams and services.
Bihari Mauritians are the descendants of mainly Bhojpuri and some Awadhi speaking migrants to Mauritius. A majority of Indo-Mauritians are of Bihari descent, and the majority of Mauritians are Indo-Mauritian. All but one Mauritian prime ministers have been of Bihari descent. The community includes a Hindu majority, followed by Muslims while a minority practices Christianity. About 60 percent of the 1.2 million population of Mauritius is of Indian origin, many them from Bihar, with Bhojpuri as their mother tongue.
The nationality law of Bangladesh governs the issues of citizenship and nationality of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The law regulates the nationality and citizenship status of all people who live in Bangladesh as well as all people who are of Bangladeshi descent. It allows the children of expatriates, foreigners as well as residents in Bangladesh to examine their citizenship status and if necessary, apply for and obtain citizenship of Bangladesh.
Overseas Indians, officially Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and People of Indian Origin (PIOs) are Indians who reside or originate outside of India. According to the Government of India, Non-Resident Indians are citizens of India who currently are not living in India, while the term People of Indian Origin refers to people of Indian birth or ancestry who are citizens of countries other than India. Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) is given to People of Indian Origin and to persons who are not People of Indian Origin but married to People of Indian Origin. Persons with OCI status are known as Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs). The OCI status is a permanent visa for visiting India with a foreign passport.
The Muhajir people 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.
Nowadays, no one could still claim his pure race status. Ethnic, social and linguistic differences become each day more and more present and marked all over the world. Time, history and continuous population intermingling across boundaries led to create cosmopolitan beings, that is to say world citizens who, in spite of their singularity, manage to bring themselves together in order to create a unique and single nation. Among the nations most affected by this cross-fertilization is notably found Mauritius. The social and linguistic diversity of this country makes it unique and contribute to its wealth. It arouses curiosity, urges us to deepen our knowledge on the subject and is, to this extent, worth being studied.
The Bhojpuri people or Bhojpuriyas are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group from the Indian subcontinent who speak the Bhojpuri-language and inhabit the Bhojpuri-Purvanchal region. This area is now divided between the western part of the Indian state of Bihar, the eastern part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, northwestern Jharkhand, along with some neighbouring districts in the Madhya Pradesh and Madhesh of Nepal. A significant diaspora population of Bhojpuris can be found in Trinidad and Tobago, Netherlands, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, other parts of the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa, and Mauritius.
The Bihari Muslim minority in Bangladesh were subject to persecution during and after the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, experiencing widespread discrimination. Biharis were ethnic Urdu-speakers and largely maintained a pro-Pakistani stance, supported the Pakistan Armed Forces and opposed the independence of Bangladesh and the Bengali language movement of the Bengali Muslims. Biharis faced reprisals from Mukti Bahini and militias resulting in an estimated death toll ranging from 1,000 to 150,000. Bihari representatives claim 500,000 Biharis were killed, while the Pakistani government's "white paper" and the US Consul estimated 64,000 - 66,000 deaths.
The president said while he had every sympathy for the plight of thousands of people in Bangladesh known as 'stranded Pakistanis', he could not allow them to emigrate to Pakistan. The president said he would do everything possible to resolve the issue, but at the moment, Pakistan is still struggling to accommodate thousands of Afghan refugees.