We are east Bengali (1960-1965) refugees are people who left East Bengal following the Partition of Bengal, which was part of the Independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. An overwhelming majority of these refugees and immigrants were Bengali Hindus. During the Bangladesh liberation war with West Pakistan, an estimated 10 million people of East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) fled the country and took refuge in India particularly in the Indian states of West Bengal and Indian North East region, especially Tripura and Assam. Settlement

The majority of East Bengali refugees settled in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta) and various other towns and rural areas of West Bengal, but a significant number also moved to the Barak Valley of Assam and the princely state of Tripura which eventually joined India in 1949. Around 0.5 million were also settled in other parts of India, including the East Pakistan Displaced Persons' Colony (EPDP) in Delhi (subsequently renamed Chittaranjan Park), Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. The estimated 0.5 million Bengalis in Delhi and 0.3 million in Mumbai are also largely East Bengali refugees and their descendants. 

1960s Migration continued, primarily from East Pakistan to India, right up to the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, both on an ongoing basis and with spikes during periods of particular communal unrest such as the 1964 East Pakistan riots and the 1965 India-Pakistan War, it is estimated that 600,000 refugees left for India.  Then after being displaced from Bangladesh, the Government of India brought many Hindu refugees to the Mana camp in Madhya Pradesh in the 1960s. From there around 100-150 families were shifted to CR Park in Delhi. Then around 54 Bengali families were shifted from Delhi to Mahila Ashram Karnal, Haryana with the help of Government of India and Government of Haryana. Then in the year 1990 we were rehabilitated by the Social Defence and Security Department, Haryana (Chandigarh) in Sector 14 Part 2 of Karnal and since then we all are living there.

Bengali Welfare Association, Karnal (Reg.)– a registered charitable organization, was formed in 2010 by a motley of passionate Karnal Bengali-ites who shared among themselves the desire not only to make a difference to their immediate neighborhood but also to the society at large by way of enhancing cultural and social harmony. We organized the Vishal Durgotsav with the purpose of bringing people from all walks of life, irrespective of cast, creed and religion, closer to each other with the purpose of offering a platform to interact and communicate. And when the first Durgotsav was organized in the year 1990 then the name of our organization was Karnal Durga Puja Samiti. From its humble moorings in 1990, today our Durgotsav has become a landmark event in the cosmopolitan calendar of Karnal.