Maharaja Duleep Singh

The first Sikh migration came in the 1950s. It was mostly of men from the Punjab seeking work in British industry, which had a shortage of unskilled labor. Most of the new arrivals worked in industries like foundries and textiles. In United States, Sikh migration started about 100 years ago, early 1900's. They settled as farmers, railroad workers and workers of Panama Canal. Visit

The Sikh community, now numbering around 20 million, is scattered across the globe. Whilst the majority of Sikhs still reside in the Punjab there has an outward migration to most areas of the world over the past 500 years.  By the closing decades of the nineteenth century Sikhs had started migrating in significant numbers to as far away places as Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and to the southeast Asian countries of Singapore and Malaysia. By the beginning of this century, they had started arriving on the Pacific coast of North America until the Immigration laws and the Komagatu maru affair curtailed their further migration. Visit