Pakistan's 1951 Census: State-Building in Post-Partition Sindh

This article explores the carrying out of Pakistan’s first (1951) census from the perspective of contemporary developments in the southern province of Sindh. Conducted against the backdrop of Partition-related migration to and from the province, this attempt at population enumeration proved to be a mammoth bureaucratic undertaking on the part of the recently-created Pakistani state. The challenges that this exercise posed at the provincial level shed light on processes of attempted nation-building, as well as the centrality of population counting to the biopolitical management of citizenship, during a key period of transition in mid-twentieth century Sindh.