Bradford, West Yorkshire

Bradford is a city in West Yorkshire where South Asian migrants have settled since the 1950s, while the textile industry that had long been its trade declined through the later twentieth century. Punjabi Sikhs from the Jullundur Doab were among Britain’s first South Asian migrants; the UK Sikh population is estimated at about 7,000 in 1951, 16,000 in 1961 and 72,000 in 1971. The 2021 census counted 24,034 Sikhs in Yorkshire and the Humber, 0.44 percent of the region.

Key moments

• Before 1964: Bradford’s Sikhs travel to the gurdwara at Chapeltown, Leeds.
• 1964: the first gurdwara in Bradford is founded at 16 Garnett Street. A 2015 report on the district’s first Sikh temple, in a former carpet warehouse on Garnett Street and since closed, dates it to 1965.
• 1965 and 1970: a plot is bought on Malvern Street. After a dispute, the committee is disbanded in 1970 and two bodies replace it: the United Sikh Association, which builds at Malvern Street, and the Bradford Sikh Association, which buys Prospect Hall on Wakefield Road and renames it Gurdwara Guru Nanak Dev Ji.
• 1972: the Guru Gobind Singh Gurdwara is formally opened with the Lord Mayor of Bradford, the Indian High Commissioner and local MPs present.
• 1975, 1985 and 1999: land for a car park and a building for the Punjabi Language School, a new Diwan Hall, and a rebuild that adds a second Diwan Hall and a larger Langar Hall. To mark 300 years of the Khalsa, Malvern Street is renamed Gobind Marg.

What it means today. The Guru Gobind Singh Gurdwara is the city’s main Sikh institution. Its website lists a Panjabi school, a Sikhism or Gurmat class, music and kirtan classes, a crèche and a library.