Brampton

Brampton is a city in Peel Region, west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 2021 census counted 163,260 Sikhs in the city, 25.1 percent of its residents, which makes Sikhism the second most common religion there after Christianity at 35.7 percent (the city's economic development office, from Statistics Canada). Al Jazeera put Surrey, British Columbia, at about 154,000 Sikhs, so on those two figures Brampton is the larger Sikh city.

Key moments

• 6 April 2017: the Ontario Assembly passed a motion, moved by Brampton-Springdale MPP Harinder Malhi, that named the 1984 killings of Sikhs a genocide. Scroll reported 34 votes for and 5 against; The Tribune said 35. India’s foreign ministry rejected the motion as misguided. The Tribune called it the brainchild of a powerful Punjabi caucus in Ontario politics, and said part of the opposition saw it as a last-ditch Liberal move to protect its image before an election.
• 18 September 2022: Sikhs for Justice held the first Canadian round of its unofficial Khalistan referendum at the Gore Meadows Community Centre. Geo News reported that organisers and local observers put the turnout at more than 110,000; that is their estimate, not a verified count. India’s foreign ministry condemned the vote as a farcical exercise and said three diplomatic messages to Ontario had brought little action. Canada replied that its citizens may assemble peacefully, and that it would not recognise the referendum (The Tribune).

What it means today. For Sikhs abroad, Brampton is a city where a quarter of the residents share the faith, and where questions the Panth asks about 1984 and about Khalistan have been put to a legislature and to a public vote. The sources opened here establish the motion and the referendum; they do not measure how Brampton’s Sikhs as a whole feel about either.