Thoothukudi (Tuticorin), Tamil Nadu

Thoothukudi, long spelt Tuticorin in English, is a port city in Tamil Nadu in the far south of India. The district's own website says the town grew as a maritime port and is traditionally called "Pearl City", after the pearl fish once common there. The district was carved out of Tirunelveli district on 20 October 1986.

Its place in this record is small and recent. It is the birthplace of Jeevan Singh Tamil, a Supreme Court lawyer born to Hindu Dalit parents who had become Christians before he was born. Onmanorama reports that he later turned to Buddhism and then to Sikhism, which he found to be the philosophy that could eradicate the caste system. He has studied Sikhism since 2014, was initiated in 2023, and leads the Bahujan Dravida Party, a small party of mostly Tamil Sikhs.

Key moments

• 2014: Jeevan Singh begins to study Sikhism.
• 2019: he and his followers start the Bahujan Dravida Party as a movement. By 2023 it is a party, and he says it has units in 14 states.
• 2023: he is initiated into Sikhism.
• October 2024: Onmanorama counts around 25 practising Tamil Sikhs. They gather for discussion and prayer at his home at Korampallam in Thoothukudi, which he has turned into the School of Miri Piri, a centre for politics and culture.

What it means today: the Sikh presence in Thoothukudi is a handful of families and a political project, not an old Sikh settlement. It matters to the Panth as the place where a Dalit movement in the far south has chosen Sikhism as its answer to caste. The sources we opened do not give the number of Sikhs living in the city itself.