Situated 58 km from Mumbai, the once-barren land has developed into a town in the Thane district, Maharashtra. Ulhasnagar, a colony of Sindhi Hindu refugees, is 61 years old. It is a railway station on the Mumbai- Pune route of the Central Railway. Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra is a municipal town and the headquarters of the Tehsil bearing the same name. The town's foundation stone was laid with the blessings of Mohandas Gandhi, and hence the town was named Gandhidham. This plan was subsequently revised by Adams Howard and Greeley company in 1952. Koenigsberger, director of the Government of India's division of housing. The first plan was prepared by a team of planners headed by Dr. The main objective of the corporation was to assist in the rehousing of displaced persons by the construction of a new town on a site a few miles inland from the location selected by the Government of India for the new port of Kandla on the Gulf of Kachchh. The Sindhi Resettlement Corporation (SRC) was formed with Acharaya Kriplani as chairman and Bhai Pratap Dialdas as managing director. The Maharaja of Kutch, His Highness Maharao Shri Vijayrajji Khengarji Jadeja, at the request of Mohandas Gandhi, gave 15,000 acres (61 km 2) of land to Bhai Pratap, who founded the Sindhu Resettlement Corporation to rehabilitate Sindhi Hindus uprooted from their motherland. Kubernagar was established with barracks (houses), which were allocated to the refugees who arrived into Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad Īhmedabad's population increased dramatically in when many households and individuals of Hindu Sindhi descendants arrived from Pakistan for refuge into Ahmedabad. The Indian Institute of Sindhology established at Adipur, Gandhidham (Kutch), is a centre for advanced studies and research in fields related to the Sindhi language. Adipur, like Gandhidham, was built on the donated land to rehabilitate Hindu Sindhi refugees coming from Sindh. 15,000 acres (61 km 2) of land was donated by the Maharaj of Kutch, His Highness Maharao Shri Vijayrajji Khengarji Jadeja at the request of Mohan Das Gandhi because it was felt that the climate and culture of Kutch resembled that of Sindh. The person credited with the formation of this settlement was Bhai Pratap Dialdas, who requested the land from Mohandas Gandhi for the mostly Sindhi immigrants from Pakistan. Its management was later passed onto a self-governing body called the Sindhu Resettlement Corporation (SRC).
Adipur was founded by the government of India as a refugee camp. Soon after the partition of Pakistan from India in 1947, a large group of refugees from Sindh in Pakistan, came to India. In late 2004, the Sindhi diaspora vociferously opposed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India, which asked the Government of India to delete the word "Sindh" from the Indian National Anthem (written by Rabindranath Tagore prior to the independence) on the grounds that it infringed upon the sovereignty of Pakistan. In 1967 the Government of India recognized the Sindhi language as a fifteenth official language of India in two scripts.
Many refugees overcame the trauma of poverty, though the loss of a homeland has had a deeper and lasting effect on their Sindhi culture. Many people abandoned their fixed assets and crossed newly formed borders. Refugee camps were set up for Hindu Sindhis. The responsibility of rehabilitating refugees was borne by their respective government. As of 2011 population was around 2.77 million out of which around 1.7 million (17 lakh) speak Sindhi and around 1 million speak Kachchhi. Despite this migration of Hindus, a significant Sindhi Hindu population still resides in Pakistan's Sindh province where they numbered around 2.28 million in 1998, while the Sindhi Hindus in India numbered 2.57 million in 2001. According to the census of India 1951, nearly 776,000 Sindhi Hindus were forced to migrate to India to avoid conversion to Islam. Problems were further aggravated when incidents of violence broke out in Karachi after partition. However, many Sindhi Hindus decided to leave Pakistan. At the time of partition there were 1,400,000 Hindu Sindhis, though most were concentrated in cities such as Hyderabad, Karachi, Shikarpur, and Sukkur. Hindu Sindhis were expected to stay in Sindh following the partition, as there were good relations between Hindu and Muslim Sindhis. Approximately 10 million Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India, while nearly an equal number of Muslims migrated to newly-created Pakistan from India. See also: Indian independence movement and Partition of IndiaĪfter the Partition of India, the majority of the minority Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan migrated to India, while the Muslim migrants from India settled down in Pakistan.