page_title: Mahatma Gandhi District, Houston
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mahatma Gandhi District, Houston / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Raja Sweets
context_page_description: The Mahatma Gandhi District is an ethnic enclave in Houston, Texas, United States, named after Mahatma Gandhi, consisting predominantly of Indian and Pakistani restaurants including Patel Brothers and shops and having a large South Asian population. The area is commonly referred to by locals as "Hillcroft," after Hillcroft Avenue, a major thoroughfare which houses much of the Mahatma Gandhi district.
context_section_description: In 1983 Rupa Vyas, owner of Indian-American grocery store Jay Stores, moved the store from Rice Village to the Hillcroft area. Soon after, in 1985, the Gahunias, an Indian American family, opened Raja Sweets. The founder of the business was Joginder "Yogi" Gahunia (died 2002). Within a three-year period, India Grocers opened a location in the area. As time passed, more and more Indian American and Pakistani American businesses moved to the area. Existing Indian American businesses in the area expanded.
  While being made up of Indian shops and having a large Indian population for a long time, it was not officially named until January 16, 2010 when the City of Houston held a naming ceremony. The Mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, and the Consul General of India in Houston, Sanjiv Arora, announced the name change. The Indian American community proposed marking the area as a South Asian enclave for a seven-year period until the founding of the Gandhi District.  The India Culture Center and several South Asian merchants originally wanted to rename a stretch of Hillcroft Avenue to Mahatma Gandhi Avenue; however that required signatures of 75% of commercial property owners of the given part of the street. Manisha Gandhi Mehta, a spokesperson for the opening event that was held on January 16, 2010, said that the organizers of the district found difficulty in getting non-South Asian merchants to agree to the renaming of the street. In 2009 the head members of the India Culture Center and several South Asian merchants agreed to pay $10,000 for the street signage that designates the area as the district.
caption: Raja Sweets
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