Photos of Sindh Province, southeast Pakistan

In the southeast of Pakistan, Sindh Province is the homeland of the Sindhi people, speaking their own Indo-Aryan language that is, besides Urdu, Sindh’s official language. Before Partition in 1947, 25% of Sindhis were Hindus, but they almost all migrated to India and, although now nearly all are Muslim, Sindh has Pakistan’s highest percentage of Hindu residents, 8.5%. The province’s name is derived from the Sanskrit “Sindhu”, meaning “river”, referring to the Indus river.

Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan with a population of almost 15 million, was, as is claimed, founded as a fortified village in 1729 by a brave woman, Mai Kolachi. It was named Kolachi-jo-Goth, and that named, corrupted and shortened to “Karachi” by Dutch sailors in 1742, stuck. Karachi was first selected as the nation’s capital upon Pakistan’s independence until that function moved to Rawalpindi in 1958; it remained Sindh Province’s provincial capital. Karachi is Pakistan’s industrial and financial centre and has the nation’s two commercial seaports. Its population is the nation’s most diverse, ethnically and religiously.