Early Till by the end of 16the century
Karachi was a small fishing village of
Sindhi and
Balochi people when Hindu merchants from
Thatta established a trading port there in the early 18th century. When the British seized control of the offshore, strategically located island of
Manora in 1839, Karachi had about 10,000 inhabitants. Thereafter, authorities of the
British Raj embarked on a large-scale modernisation of the city in the 19th century with the intention of establishing a major and modern port which could serve as a gateway to
Punjab, the western parts of
British India, and
Afghanistan.
Britain's competition with imperial
Russia during the
Great Game also heightened the need for a modern port near
Central Asia, and so Karachi prospered as a major centre of commerce and industry during the Raj, attracting communities of:
Africans,
Arabs,
Armenians,
Catholics from
Goa,
Jewish,
Lebanese,
Malays,
Konkani people from
Maharashtra,
Kuchhi from
Kuchh,
Gujarat in
India, and
Zoroastrians (also known as Parsees) - in addition to the large number of British businessmen and colonial administrators who established the city's poshest locales, such as
Clifton. As a result, this
mass migration changed the religious and cultural mosaic of Karachi; 104 years of British rule changed the demographic profile of Karachi from a collection of small predominantly Muslim fishing villages to a
multicultural city.
1947 Partition At the time of
independence, the population of the city of Karachi was 51.1% Hindu, 42.3% Muslim, with the remaining 7% primarily Christians (both British and native), Sikhs, Jains, with a small number of Jews. The Independence of
Pakistan in 1947 saw an influx of
Muslim refugees from India fleeing to settle. While the original Hindu inhabitants who had stayed in Karachi since prehistoric times were persecuted or killed. Ultimately most of the Hindu population migrated to India to save their faith. Many of the
Urdu-speaking and other non-
Punjabi Muslim refugees that fled from various states of India settled in Karachi, wiping out the original Sindhi Hindu culture of Karachi. == Statistics ==