Community Resources and Partnerships/India Rapid Project/Barracks of Ulhasnagar:An Oral History of a Refugee City
Applicant
[edit]- Main Wikimedia username. (required)
EngProff
- Organization
N/A
- If you are a group or organization leader, board member, president, executive director, or staff member at any Wikimedia group, affiliate, or Wikimedia Foundation, you are required to self-identify and present all roles. (required)
N/A
- Describe all relevant roles with the name of the group or organization and description of the role. (required)
N/A
Project
[edit]- 1. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.
Barracks of Ulhasnagar: An Oral History of a Refugee City
- 2. and 3. Proposed start and end dates for the proposal.
2026-08-01 - 2027-07-31
- 4. Where will this proposal be implemented? (required)
India
- 5. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign, project, or event? If so, please select the relevant project or campaign. (required)
Not applicable
- 6. What is the change you are trying to bring? What are the main challenges or problems you are trying to solve? Describe this change or challenges, as well as main approaches to achieve it. (required)
According to the Needs Assessment for Documentation and Revitalization of Indic Languages Using Wikimedia Projects (Link: [1]), there is a need to focus on Indic languages and within these languages, on the aspect of oral culture.
Sindhi is a South Asian language spoken in Sindh, Pakistan. Sindhis had to migrate from Sindh to various parts of India during the Partition. Ulhasnagar is one of the largest settlements of Sindhis in India. The language is in danger of disappearing from India because it is not used in academic and governance spaces in the country. As Sindhis adopt the languages of the cities they have settled in, they do not speak the language even at home. This project attempts to document Sindhi language in the form of oral histories.
However, this oral histories project has a specific focus. Rather than focus on the generic aspects of language, it focuses on the intention to build an archive of Ulhasnagar which is a refugee city in the sense that it was a refugee settlement converted into a township. The city has an interesting history:
- The citizens have memories of how they or their ancestors came to the Kalyan Camp as the city of Ulhasnagar was known back then. These memories are an important part of Partition history and memory. Ulhasnagar rarely appears in these memories.
- Ulhasnagar has also experienced a severe housing crisis. From the collapse of poorly built buildings to the construction of illegal buildings, the city offers lessons from the point of view of citizens’ memories.
- The city is still organised around barracks which were the historical structures where soldiers fighting in World War II were housed. Barracks do not find space in the typology of housing and informal housing because as structures with a specific history, these are yet to be explored.
- In recent times, Sindhis have begun to leave Ulhasnagar in search of better housing for nearby areas. Citizens have been facing a shortage of space and/or stigma around living in the barracks.
With this background in mind, this project seeks to bring about the following change:
- It seeks to make space for Sindhi community and language on Wikimedia Commons.
- It aims to represent the Indian side of Sindhi on Wikimedia projects. Because Wikimedia projects tend to use the Perso-Arabic Sindhi script and because the script is on the decline in India, Indian perspectives do not find space on Wikimedia. With audio, and hopefully through its transcription in Devanagari script, Sindhi will find a stronger representation on Wikimedia.
- In terms of larger impact outside Wikimedia projects, it attempts to register home and displacement as issues of a Partition-affected community to address gaps in academic research on Partition Studies. It also wants to draw attention to the importance of citizens’ voices, memories, and histories as they live it.
The challenges faced this project faces are:
- Constraints in resources do not allow the investigators to reach as many participants as possible. A lot of travel is needed to meet respondents as per their convenient time.
- Another team member or two are needed to maintain records, generate transcripts of the interviews, proofread them, and translate them.
- A lack of basic equipment such as recorders, storage, and transcription assistance through Generative AI or similar software slows down the process of maintaining the corpus.
The approaches to be used to achieve the above mentioned change include:
- Documentation of Sindhi language in its specificity of the way it is spoken in Ulhasnagar: Ulhasnagar has an advantage over other cities in India where Sindhis settled. Because it was a full fledged township and it has one of the largest concentration Sindhi population, the Sindhi spoken here is not as prone to influence from neighbouring languages to the extent it is influenced in other Indian cities
- Documentation of memories in the form of oral histories, making them available as non-text material (audio recordings but also with transcription/text)
- Collection of citizens’ memories of Ulhasnagar as their home city in the face of memories of homelessness as experienced by the earliest migrants/refugees
- 7. What are the planned activities? (required) Please provide a list of main activities. You can also add a link to the public page for your project where details about your project can be found. Alternatively, you can upload a timeline document. When the activities include partnerships, include details about your partners and planned partnerships.
Wikimedia Category page: [2]
Separate website for later analysis: [3]
Planned activities include:
Collection of more interviews
Transcription of the audio files
Translation in English of the Sindhi-Hindi transcriptions
Curation of the oral history archive on Wikimedia Commons
Workshop for other Wikimedians interested in oral narratives on: oral narratives methodology and transcription, transliteration and translation methods for oral narratives
Availability of research and documentation report and kit for further dissemination
- 8. Describe your team. Please provide their roles, Wikimedia Usernames and other details. (required) Include more details of the team, including their roles, usernames, Wikimedia group, and whether they are salaried, volunteers, consultants/contractors, etc.
Soni Wadhwa, Principal Investigator. Teaches Literature Studies at SRM University, Andhra Pradesh. Wikimedia username: EngProff.
Responsible for:
Managing collected data, Uploading audio files on Wikimedia Commons, developing metadata, curation on the project website
Previous background:
A. Volunteer work done with Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru for
- Research study titled Open Movement in India: The Idea and Its Expressions. February 2024. Link: [4]
- Participation in and reportage on the Future of the Commons, July 2024.
Links:
- Participation in and reportage on She Leads Bootcamp, January 2025. Link: [8]
B. Association with Open Knowledge Initiative, IIIT Hyderabad
- Participation in Advanced Train the Trainer Programme as one of the trainers, October 2025. Link: [9]
- Participation in and reportage on Bahu Bhasa, November 2025. Links:
C. Participation in Wikimedia Tech Summit:
Indic Wiki Tech Summit 2023: [12]
Indic Wiki Tech Summit 2024: [13]
D. Archivist for
PG Sindhi Library: [14]
Sindhi Halchal Archive: [15]
Sindhi Sanchaya: [16]
Infrastructures around Sindhi Literature, an oral history archive on YouTube: [17]
Neelima Motwani, Co-Principal Investigator. Lecturer, CHM College, Ulhasnagar; Lead Coordinator for Sindhi, Bhashini, IIT Madras.
Responsible for:
Field work, data collection such as identifying, recruiting, and interviewing potential respondents, recording the interviews, sharing the interviews on cloud, collecting informed consent forms signed by respondents
Previous background:
Digitisation Coordinator: Sindhu Youth Circle, Ulhasnagar
Participation in:
- Lead Coordinator for Sindhi, Bhashini, IIT Madras
- Future of the Commons, organised by Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, July 2024
- Bahu Bhasa, organised by Open Knowledge Initiative, IIIT Hyderabad, November 2025
- 9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities? (required)
Target participants:
South Asian Wikimedia communities interested in:
- Oral narratives
- Research and documentation
- Indic languages
- Editors interested in GLAM projects
- Editors interested in Topics for Interest (with a focus on South Asian history, cities, languages)
Engagement:
- Workshop on oral narratives methodology
- Availability of research and documentation report and kit for further dissemination
- Workshop on transliteration and translation methods for oral narratives
Beyond Current Wikimedia Community:
The target participants are Sindhis who have lived or still live in Ulhasnagar. Most of them speak Sindhi. Some choose to speak in other languages such as Hindi.
Engagement:
The Co-Principal Investigator lives in Ulhasnagar and approaches friends, colleagues, and family to identify potential respondents. She briefs them about the project and its purpose before and during the interviews. After the interview, she shares the URLs to the interviews published on Wikimedia Commons with the concerned respondents. She also follows up with them regarding references to other respondents.
The Principal Investigator manages the archive of oral histories including curation in the form of short descriptions of the interviews which go on Wikimedia Commons as well as the project website. This curatorial aspect is a part of how the respondents see their responses summarised.
It is hoped that the larger Sindhi speaking community from Ulhasnagar/India will become aware of Wikimedia projects and will contribute to them in future.
- 9.1. If your project includes in-person activities, are there any international participants travelling to India for them? (required)
- No
- 9.1.1. List all countries of participation. (required)
- 9.2. Will the project be transferring funds to any international participants? (required)
- No
- 9.2.1. List all international participants receiving funding and their countries. (required)
N/A
- 10. Does your project involve work with children or youth? (required)
- No
- 10.1. Please provide a link to your Youth Safety Policy. (required) If the proposal indicates direct contact with children or youth, you are required to outline compliance with international and local laws for working with children and youth, and provide a youth safety policy aligned with these laws. Read more here.
N/A
- 11. How did you discuss the idea of your project with your community members and/or any relevant groups? Please describe steps taken and provide links to any on-wiki community discussion(s) about the proposal. (required) You need to inform the community and/or group, discuss the project with them, and involve them in planning this proposal. You also need to align the activities with other projects happening in the planned area of implementation to ensure collaboration within the community.
The Sindhi community in India is more familiar with the Devanagari script than Perso-Arabic script which is the script represented on Wikimedia. The absence of Sindhi Devanagari on Wikimedia projects is one of the reasons why the Indian side of Sindhi community does not get represented on Wikimedia. It is hoped that with this project, Sindhi Devanagari finds space on Wikimedia and Sindhis in India become aware of its potential.
The PI looks forward to collaborating with Open Knowledge Initiatives to work further on Sindhi language and script related projects. Nitesh Gill and Pavan Santhosh have very kindly agreed to be Community Advisors for the same.
The potential respondents are briefed about the project and its aims and scope. The contents of both the project description and informed consent form can be shared on request. These are available in English, Hindi, and Sindhi.
- 12. Does your proposal aim to work to bridge any of the content knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Language
- 13. Does your proposal include any of these areas or thematic focus? Select one option that most applies to your work. (required)
Culture, heritage or GLAM
- 14. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities? Select one option that most apply to your work. (required)
Linguistic / Language
- 15. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select one that most applies. (required)
Identify Topics for Impact
Metrics
[edit]- 17. What do you hope to learn from your work in this project or proposal? (required)
The change expected from this project includes:
- Documentation of Sindhi language in the form of oral histories
- Creation of space for Devanagari Sindhi along with Perso-Arabic Sindhi on Wikimedia projects
- Attention to the Sindhi experience of the Partition in terms of displacement and homelessness that in a way continues to haunt the Sindhis who chose to settle in Ulhasnagar
- Importance to citizens’ voices, memories, and histories within discourses around urban design and planning
- Experimentation with research questions at the intersection of urban studies, informal housing, Partition studies, and oral history
- 18. What are your Wikimedia project targets in numbers (metrics)? (required)
| Other Metrics | Target | Optional description |
|---|---|---|
| Number of participants | 512 | New participants: 500 respondents to oral narratives
Returning participants: 2 researchers + 10 Wikimedians interested in using oral narratives in their projects |
| Number of editors | 11 | Returning editor: The PI edits Wikimedia. She will continue to contribute. 10 more contributors from the workshop to be conducted as part of dissemination activities |
| Number of organizers | 5 | The 2 researchers will be responsible for implementing the project and organising the workshop.
3 advisors from the Open Knowledge Initiative will also extend support. |
| Wikimedia project | Number of content created or improved |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Wikimedia Commons | 477 |
| Wikidata | |
| Wiktionary | |
| Wikisource | |
| Wikimedia Incubator | |
| Translatewiki | |
| MediaWiki | |
| Wikiquote | |
| Wikivoyage | |
| Wikibooks | |
| Wikiversity | |
| Wikinews | |
| Wikispecies | |
| Wikifunctions or Abstract Wikipedia |
- Optional description for content contributions.
N/A
- 19. Do you have any other project targets in numbers (metrics)? (optional)
No
| Main Open Metrics | Description | Target |
|---|---|---|
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
| N/A | N/A | N/A |
- 20. What tools would you use to measure each metrics? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support. (required)
Support requested
Budget
[edit]- 21. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it. (required)
- 22. What is the amount you are requesting for this proposal? Please provide the amount in Indian Rupees. (required)
447000 INR
- 22.1. Convert the amount requested into USD using the Oanda converter. This is done to help you assess the USD equivalent of the requested amount. Your request should be between 500 - 5,000 USD. (required)
4938.34 USD
- By submitting this proposal request you agree with the Institutional Partner Privacy Policy, Application Privacy Statements, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.
Yes
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