Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra
Built on Kalyan military camp; the densest Sindhi city in the world and a manufacturing hub.
Guide · Sindhis in India
The Sindhi community in India.
Sindhis are the only major Indian community that arrived in 1947 without a home state to arrive in. Sindh was not partitioned — it went whole to Pakistan. What followed was the improbable rebuilding of a landless people into one of India's most enterprising communities, from Ulhasnagar's transit camps to boardrooms in Mumbai.
1.2M+
Sindhi Hindus who crossed after 1947
2.8M
Declare Sindhi as mother tongue (census)
~5M
Estimated ethnic Sindhis in India
1967
Sindhi recognised as a scheduled language
A community without a state
Punjabis and Bengalis who fled in 1947 crossed into a truncated but familiar version of their own province. Sindhis had no such landing. They were dispersed across a dozen states as refugees, given camp barracks and small rehabilitation loans, and left to reconstruct community life from scratch. The absence of a Sindhi state in India explains almost everything that followed — the entrepreneurship, the dispersal, and the language decline. The exile itself is told in The Great Exile.
Cities built by refugees
Ulhasnagar began as Kalyan Camp, a set of WWII army barracks outside Bombay, and became a city of hundreds of thousands. Gandhidham in Kutch was planned from nothing by Bhai Pratap Dialdas as a Sindhi homeland-in-miniature next to Kandla port. Both are now industrial centres in their own right.
Institutions that held
Sindhi panchayats, Jhulelal temples, Cheti Chand processions, and a network of trusts and schools — including the colleges founded by Principal K. M. Kundnani and the Hyderabad (Sind) National Collegiate Board — kept the community coherent while it dispersed geographically.
Where Sindhis settled
Mumbai
Chembur, Ulhasnagar's neighbours, Sion-Koliwada and Bandra hold long-established Sindhi neighbourhoods and institutions.
Gandhidham, Gujarat
Founded in 1947 by Bhai Pratap Dialdas expressly as a new home for Sindhi refugees, beside Kandla port.
Ajmer & Jaipur, Rajasthan
Early resettlement centres, still home to Sindhi panchayats, schools and Jhulelal temples.
Bhopal & Indore, Madhya Pradesh
Sizeable trading communities with active Sindhi language and Cheti Chand celebrations.
Delhi NCR
Lajpat Nagar and Pitampura grew from refugee rehabilitation colonies into commercial centres.
Frequently asked questions
How many Sindhis live in India?
India's census records around 2.8 million people who declare Sindhi as their mother tongue, but community estimates put the ethnically Sindhi population far higher — roughly 4 to 6 million — because many families have shifted to Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi at home.
Where do Sindhis live in India?
The largest concentrations are in Maharashtra (Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Pune, Nagpur), Gujarat (Ahmedabad, Gandhidham, Kutch), Rajasthan (Jaipur, Ajmer), Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal, Indore), Delhi NCR and Chhattisgarh.
What is Ulhasnagar?
A city near Mumbai built on a former World War II military transit camp, where the government resettled around 100,000 Sindhi refugees after 1947. It grew into the largest concentrated Sindhi settlement in the world and a major manufacturing and trading hub.
Why are Sindhis known for business in India?
Sindhi Hindus arrived in 1947 with no land, no state patronage and no reserved quotas — trade was the fastest route back to security. That combined with pre-existing Sindhworki merchant networks abroad produced families like the Hindujas, Advanis, Chellarams and Raheja group.
Is Sindhi still spoken by Indian Sindhis?
Less every generation. Sindhi is a scheduled language of India with school provision in some states, but with no Sindhi-speaking territory in India, most third and fourth generation families now speak it only with grandparents.