At the crossroads? Exploring Sindh's recent past from a spatial perspective

This article explores Sindh, today a province in Pakistan, in terms of its spatial relationship with the various overlapping ‘worlds’ to which it has belonged in the recent past. Sindh's reputation under the British was as a sleepy backwater, located at a distance from centres of colonial power. But this simplistically static picture belies its relationship, for instance, with new communication and transportation links that connected it in different ways to places outside its immediate provincial boundaries, whether Indian, imperial or international. By the time of British India's independence, Sindh (and its port city of Karachi in particular) constituted a major crossroads: and while in the second half of the twentieth century it became more of a hub than it had ever been in its history, equally never before had so many people made it their final destination and home. This article, thus, traces the interconnected processes that, both before and since 1947, have helped to position, and arguably redefine, Sindh's place in the world.