uelling the rebellion and was rewarded for his valor with an OBE. This was
awarded to him on 23 April 1858. However, he remains unpopular in areas of
Karachi to this day, and is known by some locals as 'chicken'. In 1864, the
first telegraphic message was sent from India to England, when a direct
telegraph connection was laid between Karachi and London. In 1878, the city was
connected to the rest of British India by rail. Public building projects, such
as Frere Hall (1865) and the Empress Market (1890), were undertaken. In 1876,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was born in the city, which by
now had become a bustling city with mosques, temples, courthouses, paved
streets and a harbor. By 1899, Karachi had become the largest wheat exporting
port in the East. Before the year 1880 the majority of the population in Karachi
consisted of the indigenous Sindhis and Baloch ( were bilingual & also
spoke Sindhi as their second language). Karachi was a small port town and part
of Talpur dynasty in Sindh. The British East India Company captured Karachi on
3 February 1839 and started developing it as a major port. As a result of
British rule the local Hindu population established a massive presence in the
city.
These developments in Karachi resulted in an influx of economic migrants:
Parsis, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Marathis, Goans, Chinese, British, Arabs and
Gujaratis. The population of the city was about 105,000 inhabitants by the end
of the 19th century, with a mix of nationalities. British colonialists embarked
on works of sanitation and transportation – such as gravel paved streets,
drains, street sweepers, and a network of trams and horse-drawn trolleys.
At the time of independence of Pakistan in 1947, Karachi had a population
slightly under half a million.
By the time of independence of Pakistan in 1947, Karachi had become a
bustling metropolis with classical and colonial European styled buildings,
