From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Hyderabadis/Shehla Burney
After Hyderabad was annexed by India in 1948, thousands of aristocratic Hyderabadis began to migrate abroad, mostly to England, where many had been educated and had family ties. In 1956, when Hyderabad was divided among Indian states with totally different cultures and lifestyles, the exodus of the educated and wealthy Hyderabadis to Britain, and also to Australia, increased.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s a number of young Hyderabadi men, and a few women, whose goals were professional and academic, began to migrate to the United States for higher education. Some Hyderabadi families who had already settled in Britain also moved to North America and they were followed by middle- and working-class people who left directly from Hyderabad for the United States and Canada. The first Hyderabadis to arrive in Canada were two brothers, Farooq and Siddiq, who settled in Toronto in 1963. Hyderabadi immigration increased substantially after 1967. The early Hyderabadi immigrants in Canada were mostly unmarried or newly married young people without families. The majority of women who came were following the lead of their husbands.
The Hyderabadi community is centred primarily in Metropolitan Toronto. There are, as well, numerically significant groups in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver, as well as in Chicago, New York City, and California in the United States. In the 1970s and early 1980s Hyderabadis who were already settled in Canada were able to sponsor their parents and other family members, and by the mid-1980s some families had as many as 200 members. Canadian censuses do not provide data on Hyderabadis, but the unofficial estimate of the size of the population is between 25,000 and 35,000.
Fluent in English, educated, Westernized, and fairly acculturated, most middle-class Hyderabadis were able to find employment in Canada, and today many of them, women as well as men, hold professional positions as doctors, academics, engineers, and journalists. Many have also been successful in the arts and in business. Initially, however, their academic or professional degrees and experience were not recognized, and most were at first underemployed, for example, as security guards and florists. As new immigrants, the Hyderabadis lacked business and family connections, and they were isolated from mainstream Canadian society.
