United Kingdom

Britain annexed the Sikh kingdom, became home to Europe's oldest large Sikh community, and has been a stage for the Panth's causes since 1984. The 2021 census of England and Wales counted 525,865 usual residents who identified as Sikh by religion, ethnic group or both, 0.9 per cent of the population, and 426,230 of them by religion alone. The West Midlands holds five of the ten local authorities with most Sikhs (Sandwell, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall and Coventry), home to 26.4 per cent of Sikh residents. Outer London holds four (Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Redbridge), with 18.5 per cent. These figures cover England and Wales only.

Key moments

• 29 March 1849: Lord Dalhousie proclaimed that the Punjab kingdom had ceased and its lands were part of British India.
• 1854: Duleep Singh, then 15, was taken to Britain. He lived at Elveden and died penniless in Paris in 1893, aged 55.
• 1908 to 1911: the Khalsa Jatha, called the first Sikh society in the UK, was formed in 1908, and the first gurdwara in London followed in 1911 after members approached the Maharaja of Patiala, who gave 1,000 pounds.
• 10 June 1984: about 25,000 Sikhs marched from Hyde Park to the Indian High Commission after Operation Blue Star.
• 4 February 2014: Foreign Secretary William Hague made a statement on a review ordered by David Cameron. It found that one SAS officer advised Indian officials early in the planning of the attack on Sri Harmandir Sahib, that the advice had limited impact, and that there was no evidence of advance warning. The Sikh Federation UK argued the review's time frame was too narrow.
• 31 October and 7 November 2021: Sikhs for Justice held its Khalistan referendum votes in Westminster and at gurdwaras in Southall and Gravesend. Organisers claimed more than 30,000 voters in London and more than 10,000 in the second phase; the figures were not independently confirmed.
• 1 October 2026: Jagtar Singh Johal, a Sikh blogger from Dumbarton detained by Indian police on 4 November 2017, walked out of Tihar jail on bail after nearly nine years. He must surrender his passport and still faces trial in eight cases. In April 2026 ten UN legal experts had called on India to release him.

Today: British Sikhs are a large and settled community, with gurdwaras from Southall to the West Midlands, and a lasting argument with the state that once ruled Punjab.