(in South Asia) a large building divided into many separate tenements, offering cheap, basic accommodation to labourers.
Example sentencesExamples
-  And we, who reside in the overcrowded chawls, we simply live.
 -  He has not forgotten the crowded chawl he lived in before he got his first break.
 -  For the first time, Muslim women from the chawls and slums came forward said Irfan.
 -  When the textile mills were set up in Bombay the employers were required to provide housing in the form of chawls for their workers.
 -  They lived together in a room apartment in a chawl owned by the local touts.