Sind (sometimes called Scinde, ) was a province of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

from 1 April 1936 to 1947 and

Dominion of Pakistan The Dominion of Pakistan, officially Pakistan, was an independent federal dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, which existed from 14 August 1947 to Pakistan Day, 23 March 1956. It was created by the passing of the Indian Independence ...

from 14 August 1947 to 14 October 1955. Under the British, it encompassed the current territorial limits excluding the princely state of Khairpur. Its capital was

Karachi Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

. After Pakistan's creation, the province lost the city of Karachi, as it became the capital of the newly created country. It became part of

West Pakistan West Pakistan was the western province of Pakistan between One Unit, 1955 and Legal Framework Order, 1970, 1970, covering the territory of present-day Pakistan. Its land borders were with Afghanistan, India and Iran, with a maritime border wit ...

upon the creation of the One Unit Scheme.

Administrative divisions

On 1 April 1936 Sind division was separated from Bombay Presidency and established as a province. At that time the Province's Administration division are listed below:

Geography

The province was bordered by Karachi (within the Federal Capital Territory after 1948) and the princely states of Las Bela and Kalat on the west. To the north were the provinces of

Baluchistan Balochistan ( ; , ), also spelled as Baluchistan or Baluchestan, is a historical region in West and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. This arid region of de ...

and West Punjab. The province bordered the princely state of

Bahawalpur Bahawalpur (Urdu: ; ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan. It is the 13th largest city of Pakistan and List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, 8th most populous city of Punjab. Bahawalpur is the capital of Bahawalpur Division. Founded in ...

on the northeast and it enclosed on three sides the princely state of Khairpur. The Indian states of

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...

and

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

were beyond its borders to the east and south. On the southwest lay the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea () is a region of sea in the northern Indian Ocean, bounded on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf of Aden and Guardafui Channel, on the northwest by Gulf of Oman and Iran, on the north by Pakistan, on the east by India, and ...

, with the Sind's coastline consisting entirely of river deltas, including the

Indus River Delta The Indus River Delta forms where the Indus River flows into the Arabian Sea, mostly in the southern Sindh province of Pakistan with a small portion in the Kutch Region of India. The delta covers an area of about , and is approximately across ...

up to Sind's border with the city of

, now the capital of present-day

Sindh Sindh ( ; ; , ; abbr. SD, historically romanized as Sind (caliphal province), Sind or Scinde) is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, southeastern region of the country, Sindh is t ...

History

Sindh was first settled by the

Indus Valley Civilization The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE ...

and

Mohenjo-Daro Mohenjo-daro (; , ; ) is an archaeological site in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan. Built 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major city, cities, contemp ...

, as early as 1750 BC. It had

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

influence during its history after the expansion of the

Macedonian Empire Macedonia ( ; , ), also called Macedon ( ), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal ...

, and developed trade with surrounding regions. Several

Sunni Muslim Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Musli ...

and

Rajput Rājpūt (, from Sanskrit ''rājaputra'' meaning "son of a king"), also called Thākur (), is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating fro ...

kingdoms were set up there, beginning with the Rai dynasty and ending with the Arghuns. The

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an Early modern period, early modern empire in South Asia. At its peak, the empire stretched from the outer fringes of the Indus River Basin in the west, northern Afghanistan in the northwest, and Kashmir in the north, to ...

conquered Sindh under the rule of

Akbar Akbar (Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, – ), popularly known as Akbar the Great, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, who helped the young emperor expa ...

in the year 1591. Soon after the coming of European companies, in particular the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

, the Mughal hold on the area loosened, and in 1843 Sindh became part of the British India and its Bombay Presidency on 1 October 1848. Later it became Sindh province on 1 April 1935 under All India Act of 1935.

1936–1947

On 1 April 1936, Sind was separated from the Bombay Presidency and given the status of a province, with Karachi as the provincial capital.

1947–1955

Following a resolution in the Sindh Legislative Assembly about joining Pakistan, with the independence and

Partition of India The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Dominion of India, Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Paki ...

in August 1947 Sindh became part of Pakistan. In 1948, Karachi city (2,103 km2 area) separated from Sind to form the Federal Capital Territory of Pakistan. Apart from the city, the remaining areas of Karachi district remained part of Sind and a new district of Thatta was formed from these areas. On 11 December 1954, the Sindh Legislative Assembly voted by 100 to 4 in favour of the One Unit policy announced by

Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...

Chaudhry Mohammad Ali Chaudhri Muhammad Ali (15 July 1905 – 2 December 1982) was a Pakistani politician and statesman who served as the fourth prime minister of Pakistan from 1955 until his resignation in 1956. His government transitioned Pakistan from a Britis ...

, and Sindh was merged into the new province of

on 14 October 1955.Farhan Hanif Siddiqi, ''The Politics of Ethnicity in Pakistan'' (2012), p. 84

Government

The offices of Governor of Sindh and Premier (later Chief Minister) of Sindh were established in 1936 when Sindh became a province. This system continued until 1955 when Sindh was dissolved.

Elections

1937 Events January * January 1 – Anastasio Somoza García becomes President of Nicaragua. * January 5 – Water levels begin to rise in the Ohio River in the United States, leading to the Ohio River flood of 1937, which continues into Feb ...

1946 1946 (Roman numerals, MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1946th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 946th year of the 2nd millennium, the 46th year of the 20th centur ...

1953 Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a Estonian government-in-exile, government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito ...

Demographics

By the time of

independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

in 1947 Sindh had a Muslim majority for centuries but there were significant minorities of Hindus throughout the province. In 1947 due to communal tensions and partition two million Muslim muhajir migrated to Pakistan while most Sindhi Hindus fled to India. The Muslims from India were mostly

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

speaking.