Mirpuris (people originating from the Mirpur district in Pakistani Kashmir), form about 70% of the British Pakistani population of about 747,000. The percentage is even higher in northern cities and towns. For example, in Bradford, an industrial town in Northwest England, it is estimated that roughly three quarters of the population are from Mirpur.
Cultural Dislocation
The reasons for the large proportion of Mirpuris in the UK is historical. In the late 1950’s & early 1960’s, the Pakistani Government planned the Mangla Dam, which was to be built in the Mirpur area. They asked several thousand locals to leave the land. At that time, the British needed man-power mainly for their textile factories. Many of the Mirpuris moved to Britain and started working in factories, mostly in the so called “black country” and the area of Bradford, England. In some villages, more than half the village population moved to the UK to settle in the industrial towns. This rural, impoverished district provided cheap, unskilled labour for Britain in the 60’s and 70’s.
Most immigrants were from subsistence farming communities and had had little or no schooling. They made a huge cultural and geographical leap to settle in the UK. The profound cultural dislocation experienced by the Mirpuris is hard to imagine. Most Mirpuris speak Pothowari, a language related to Punjabi. The prominent clans among them include Rajputs (Janjua), Sudhans, Khokhars, Gakkhars, Awans, Jats, etc.
Imported Marginalisation
One of the things they brought with them was the perception of a long history of dispossession and marginalisation. The partition of India brought terrible bloodshed along with the division of Kashmir between Pakistan and India. (This was the issue cited until very recently as the most pressing political priority in the UK by the majority of British Muslims). Three of the suicide bombers of the London underground bombings in the summer of 2005 were originally from this region of Pakistan.
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The Mirpuris are still a very unreached people group. There are only a handful of known believers among them in Britain. Some of them have experienced much persecution and suffering. The home of one believing family was even set on fire fairly recently.
Please Pray:
* Pray that more British Christians would see the need to reach out to the Mirpuris, and that many more would get involved in praying for them. Pray also that Christian workers from around the world would be willing to come and minister among them.
* Pray for the few cross-cultural workers that are ministering among them, that they would have wisdom to know how to effectively reach them. And, that they would see a spiritual breakthrough among them soon.
* Pray for the few Mirpuri believers, that they would be protected, and that they would be able and willing to share the Gospel with their family and friends with cultural sensitivity and insight. Pray also for the establishment of fellowships of Mirpuri Muslim background believers.
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I am a mirpuri…and i am proud, fair enough we are part of pakistan, however, i would love it if india got out my kashmir and let us mirpuris have our land back. And for all those people who hate mirpuris, we dont really care, because we have eachother, mashallah, my family alone own 5 businesses, and all the mirpuri people we know are succesful. We love the way we are, fair enough we may be a bit more rural then other cultures, but that is for the better of our own people, im a 19 year old girl, and if my parents preffer me not having any relationship with a guy before marrige, i would be more then happy as this decision made by them is in my best interest. At school, if anyone ever needed 2 borrow money, it was a mirpuri person they would go up to, our houses and people are always welcoming.
as an ethnic kashmiri i have to tell you that mirpuris are only kashmiri by citizenship and are infact punjabis.mirpur and its ethnic punjabi population only became part of kashmir in 1846(check the 1846 treaty of amritsar for proof of this).that is why mirpuri people are correctly known to ethnic kashmiris as ethnic punjabis.im am merely stating a fact.
i am a punjabi and hate your type you lot copied our culture other day i heard some mp listening to bangra and trying to copy my language and the other thing you lot look down on us like we are inferior and thats why i hate you mp’s
mirpuri people are not trying to steal punjabi culture and cannot look down on punjabi people as mirpur was part of the punjab until the 1846 treaty of amritsar between the british and the maharaja gulab singh, in which the district of mirpur and its ethnic punjabi population ie-mirpuris became part of jammu and kashmir, which did not even come into being until this treaty.before the 1846 treaty of amritsar mirpur and its populance had no historic,geographic or ethnic connection to kashmir.that is historical fact.the population of mirpur though citizens of azad kashmir are ethnic punjabis.ask any historian or any ethnic kashmiri and they will confirm this as true.that is why mirpuri people have the same culture as punjabis as they are ethnic punjabi themselves.so it is incorrect to say mirpuris are trying to copy punjabi culture.
Allahu akbar!!! Am frm nigeria.
*common likeable disease
i would like to mention some factually untrue statements in the article. i.e. mirpuris did not come over to the UK in the result of the construction of Mangala Dam. as a matter of fact people from this part of the state of jammu and kashmir used to be in sea service since ages even before the partitioning of the sub-continent that is one, while the majority of the masses in the mirpur district belongs to the caste jat (different sects of the clan). please make the correction to keep the record correct.
Muslims and Christians all have the same agenda. We want world peace and not even an individual person to be persecuted never mind people oin the thousands….. I am a Muslim…. By name anyway…. I wish myself and more Muslims would do more work that is required from us, which is helping our local communities and in the Uk this would be things like working/volunteering in hospitals, drug and alcohol services, elderly, disabled, learning disability groups etc etc… Muslims are not bad bad people, either are Christians, both Jesus’s message and Muhammed’s was one of the same….. care for people, care for animals, care for your world….. we are all one community, not seperate…. strip us of our skin and we are identical…. Spread love and care and not hate and war…
Yes they want world peace and they will kill anyone who tries to stop them achieving it.
mirpuri people are citizens of azad kashmir but they are not ethnic kashmiris as mirpur had no ethnic or historic link to kashmir until the 1846 treaty of amritsar between the british raj and the maharaja gulab singh.before this mirpur was part of the punjab and the people of mirpur were and still are ethnic punjabis.
Also on the subject above about Mirpuri’s in Britain. I was born and brought up in Bradford. While there was a lot of not so nice Mirpuri’s the majority of them were lovely. I am from an Indian background. I had many friends from the Mirpur/Kashmir background and they were the same as all communities. he majority were lovely, but there were some bad apples. My closest friends growing up were from there. All there fathers worked, be it self employed manual labour or employed manual labour. Their mothers always invited me into their homes and fed me. Lovely hosptality. Of course there were exeprions and ther were some disgusting ones who were uneducated and horrile in personality,but on the majority the race was as any. I now work as a housing manager and one of the estates I manage, all residents are form the white race. Some parents allow their 6 year old children to stay out til 10/11pm. They curse and swear at their children with words that disgust you. They don’t have any repect for their neighbours and they do not respect the lovely house they have been given by the authorities. But they do not represent the whole of the white community. The white community is just like any group. The Majority are lovely, but there is a small percentage who are not very nice.
mirpur was part of the punjab until the treaty of amritser in 1846(as has been stated on earlier posts)and its poeple comprise of jatts rajputs and other none ethnic kashmiri people.it became part of jammu not kashmir after the 1846 treaty.jammu was renamed azad kashmir by the pakistani government after partition.it is the same as the alizai tribe in attock who are ethnic pashtuns even though they have adopted hindko as there 1st language(just as the pashtuns of kabul and its surrounding areas have adopted dari instead of pashtu as their 1st language)as until 1970 attock was part of the nwfp until ayub khan changed the borders and it became part of the punjab.though it is part of the punjab these days the alizai are still pashtun just as the peoples of mirpur are ethnic punjabi.that is 100%fact.
If that story is authentic, which we can only take ‘on faith’ from you, then Haitham clearly knew neither Christianity nor Islam very well, despite the impression that is sought to be given.
I am an example of a born Muslim who was on the verge of entering Chritianity and then rediscovered his own faith. Knowledge is the key to salvation. Knowledge of both the heart and mind.
And whomever Allah guides none can misguide; and whomever Allah misguides none can guide.
Myself a Mirpuri, mirpuries are not ethnic to Punjabi, nor it have not been part of Punjab, it was originally part of Pothohar Region until it became Jammu and then become Jammu Kashmir since 1850 ish. Mirpuries are ethnic to Pahari just like rest of Pakistan-Kashmir. We use Kashmiri as nationality because time of 1947, we werent chosed to be Pakistani or Indian, we become by force. that’s reason we are still consider belong to Kashmir Disputed.
Mirpuries are ethnic to Pahari, speak Pahari, have Pahari culture, it is sight differently from Punjabi. Mirpuri/Paharis are close to Pothohari and Dogri people than Punjab. They even close to Gujri people than Punjabi. It is just Kashmir is a nation to us.
Arsalan, you may be surprised to learn that, seeing as a very large proportion of the Sikh and Hindu Punjabis living in the city of Delhi were originally from the area around Rawalpindi, many many of the Punjabis in Delhi today speak ‘pahari’ / potwari Punjabi just like you. And they are referred to, by other Sikhs, as pahari people. That pahari dialect has, since time immemorial, been considered as one of the many Punjabi dialects (such as the majha dialect of Lahore and Amritsar, the malwai dialect of Ludhiana, the doaba dialect of Jalandhar which is now also spoken in the Faisalabad area of Pakistan.
Those ‘pahari lok’ Sikhs and Hindus in Delhi look just like you in that they are, generally, alot fairer than other Punjabis and have more aryan features. However, neither they nor you are, or ever have been, Kashmiri.
mirpuris are by and large inbred and 60 years and a few generations is proof enough that cultural dislocation is not the culprit but their own inabilities to offer something aside from claiming benefits and free housing including prison cells.
The jat and rajput casts are by their very nature a people originating from Punjab and other northern Indian areas. But the families have lived there a very long time and they consider themselves kashmiri despite not being ethnic kashmiri descendants. It is also true that since the mid 19th century, historical Kashmir consisted only of the valley of Kashmir, which extended from pir panjal mountains to the Himalayas. It was this region that jenghir reffered to as ‘heaven on earth’