Sikhism in the United Kingdom


Sikhism is a religion originating in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, former territories of the British Empire. The religion was recorded as the religion of 420,196 people resident in England at the 2011 Census, along with 2,962 people in Wales, 9,055 in Scotland and 216 in Northern Ireland, making for a total Sikh population of 432,429.

History

Sikhs and Britain have a long and storied history. Decades before the last Sikh King, Duleep Singh, stepped onto British soil in the middle of the 19th century, there had been Anglo-Sikh contact as far back as the 1800s in the Punjab with his father Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Since then, even though this relationship has changed in nature many times, both communities have left a strong permanent influence on each other. For instance, in such varied parts of British society as food, language, political systems, soldiering and of course cricket, the British-Sikh relationship has given rise to many new facets of modern British and Indian society.
The first permanent Sikh in Britain was Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh Emperor of the Imperial Sukerchakia Dynasty, from 1844-1849. He arrived in England in the year 1854, having been exiled from his kingdom by the East India Company. His mother, Empress Jind Kaur, arrived in 1860 at Kensington in Victorian London and settled permanently, after being at war with Britain for an extended period of time until the fall of the Sikh Dynasty in 1849. She was given permission by Parliament to settle on English soil.
The First Sikh Settlers started migrating from the Punjab in 1911, when the first Sikh Gurdwara was opened in London. During the start of the First and Second World Wars respectively, there was already an established Sikh presence in many parts of England. In London itself the community was small but this grew very rapidly during the 1950s and 60s and faced much discrimination, mainly due to consternations from the locals over job opportunities.
In 2019, Seema Malhotra MP set up the first debate in Parliament to discuss the positive contribution of the Sikh community over the last 70 years. Research including the British Sikh Report have been used to provide an insight into the British Sikh community.

Demographics

British Sikhs have been praised as an example of positive cultural integration in the United Kingdom, many having achieved success due to a strong cultural work ethic combined with an emphasis on the importance of the family.

London

With around 200,000 to 300,000 living in London, the area is home to the largest Sikh community in the UK, the highest demographics being in Southall, Hayes, Hounslow, Ilford, Seven Kings, Goodmayes, Mayfield, East Ham, Erith, and Belvedere. A significant population also resides in Hackney, Isleworth, Wembley, Barking, Feltham, Bexleyheath,Abbey Wood, Plumstead, and Harrow.

Slough

is the largest community outside of London, with Sikhs making up approximately 11% of the population.

Sandwell

has a large Sikh community at around 9% of the population, the majority living in West Bromwich and Smethwick. Sandwell’s first gurdwara was built in Smethwick, and is the largest outside of London.

Wolverhampton

Ten percent of the UK’s Sikh population lives in Wolverhampton. The second largest Sikh community outside of London, it is home to 23,000 inhabitants.

Education

Sixty-five percent of British Sikhs have a graduate level qualification or above. Sikhs in the 20 - 34 age group have the highest level of graduates within the Sikh community. The highest level of postgraduate qualifications of Master’s degrees is in the 35 - 49 age group. Eight percent of Sikhs aged 65 and over
have a PhD. The split of formal education between women and men is roughly equal, with slightly more women holding a university degree or equivalent.

Employment

The most popular employment sectors for British Sikhs include: Healthcare, IT and Technology, Teaching and Education, Accountancy and Financial Management, indicating that Sikhs tend to favour professional and technical employment sectors over others. Healthcare is a popular sector for all age groups. Teaching and Education is more common in the 35 - 49 and the 50 - 64 age groups than others, whereas accountancy and financial management is more popular with the 20 - 34 age group compared with 6% respectively for both the 35 - 49 and the 50 - 64 age groups. The top career choices for Sikh women are Healthcare and Teaching and Education. Healthcare is also a joint second most popular choice for Sikh men along with Accountancy and Financial Management, the most popular sector being IT and Technology.

Wealth

Home ownership

Home ownership is very high amongst British Sikhs with 87% of households owning at least a portion of their home. Thirty percent of British Sikh households own their homes outright and only 9% rent their properties. Only 1% of British Sikhs claim Housing Benefit. This represents the highest level of private home ownership rate over any other community in the UK. In addition, half of all British Sikh families own more than one property in the UK, with a similar number owning at least one property in India, apparently indicating that property ownersh is used as a top means of building assets for the future. 6% of British Sikhs own property elsewhere in Europe.

Income

Relative to the national average income at approximately £40,000 before tax, the British Sikh Report 2014 found that Sikh households tend to be affluent. Two in every three British Sikh households have pre-tax incomes in excess of £40,000, and over a third have an income in excess of £80,000, giving a value for the Sikh Pound of 7.63 billion.
Sikhs have the second lowest poverty rate in the UK, with 2% of British Sikhs living in poverty. This is in comparison to 18% of the population as a whole.
About one in three British Sikh families own a business in the UK.

Charitable giving and volunteering

Performing Seva is a basic tenet of Sikhism, and Sikhs are also expected to share at least 10 per cent their earnings with those less fortunate and for good causes.
Sixty-four percent of British Sikhs engage in some volunteering work, and 40% give between one and five hours per week on voluntary activities, including Seva at their Gurdwara, whilst more than 2% spend over 25 hours on such activities, spending about on average 200 hours per year on voluntary activities. Ninety-three percent claim to donate some money to charity every month, with 50% donating between £1 and £20 every month, and 7% donating more than £100 per month. It is estimated that Sikhs in Britain donate around £380 per year to charity on average. Taken as a whole, Sikhs in the UK are estimated to donate about £125 million to charity per annum and spend over 65 million hours each year on voluntary activities.

Care of the elderly

Sikhs prefer to live in extended family households as they grow older - 61% of males and 52% of females. The second highest preference is in their own home and the third preference is in a retirement village .

Festivals and community events

Some of the bigger festival celebrations within the British Sikh community include Vaisakhi which usually involves colourful street processions throughout the country and Diwali. Southall hosts one of the largest Vaisakhi street processions in Europe. Since 2009, both Vaisakhi and Diwali have been celebrated every year at 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British Prime Minister.

Exemptions in British law for Sikhs

Sikhs are exempt from a few British laws on account of religious reasons. For example, men wearing a Dastar may ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and are permitted to wear their Kirpan as religious dress rather than offensive weapon in certain situations. In February 2010, Sir Mota Singh, Britain's first Asian judge, criticised the banning of the Kirpan in public places such as schools.A Kirpan is a sacrificial ceremonial knife, historically used to detroath prisoners of war and other executable prisoners, now worn as part of traditional dress.

British converts to Sikhism

In an online survey of 650 Sikhs in the UK, three-quarters of them said they had experienced racism. In spite of this, 95% said they are proud of being born or living in Britain. 43% of the women surveyed said they had experienced discrimination on the basis of gender, and 71% of those had also experienced it within their extended family.

Influential British Sikh organisations

The Gurdwara remains the focal point of the Sikh community. There are also now a variety of notable organisations which have been setup by Sikhs to support the community:

Census data

In 2018, some Sikh organisations requested the ONS to include an ethnic tick box for Sikhs, creating an ongoing dispute between various Sikh organisations. The ONS rejected the request. The ONS rejected the demand in their published paper.

Inter-faith marriages

Holding an Anand Karaj wedding ceremony between a Sikh and a non-Sikh has become a contentious issue. In 2016, armed police arrested scores of protesters at Gurdwara Sahib in Leamington Spa, which The Telegraph claims "has a history of tensions over mixed marriages". Sikh Youth UK, who were behind the protest, blamed "a rogue Gurdwara committee creating discord".
One Sikh journalist called the issue a "deepening schism" while another deplored the protesters' use of masks, and the way their actions allowed the kirpan to be seen as a bladed weapon rather than traditional dress, thus giving "the racists and the bigots justifications for their ignorant hatred". An investigation on BBC Asian Network found that these disruptions over interfaith marriage had been going on for years.

Extremism

A BBC Inside Out programme televised in September 2013 interviewed several young Sikh women who were allegedly groomed and sexually abused by Muslim men, with one alleged ex-groomer even admitting that they specifically targeted Sikh girls. Bhai Mohan Singh, working for the Sikh Awareness Society, told the BBC he was investigating 19 cases where Sikh girls were allegedly being groomed by older Muslim men, of which one ended with a successful conviction.
In August 2013 four Muslims and two Hindus were convicted at Leicester Crown Court of paying a "vulnerable and damaged" 16-year-old Sikh girl for sex, the investigation having been opened due to evidence Bhai Mohan Singh had presented to the police.
However, a report published the previous year by Faith Matters claimed that the Sikh Awareness Society included radical anti-Muslim elements among its members; Faith Matters furthermore alleged it was a matter of "common consensus" that the radical Sikhs said to have had secret meetings with the English Defence League were members of the SAS. The SAS denied allegations and distanced themselves from the organization, a spokesperson telling Hope not Hate: "We would have nothing to do with any racist or fascist group, certainly one that uses religion to divide people…I know nothing about this and no, we are not in any kind of talks and discussion with them". The Nihal Show on the BBC Asian Network discussed the issue and debated the merits of the grooming claims in September 2013.

Allegations of forced conversions of Sikh girls to Islam

In 2007, a Sikh girl's family claimed that she had been forcibly converted to Islam, and after being attacked by an armed gang, they received a police guard. In response to these news stories, an open letter to Sir Ian Blair signed by ten academics argued that claims that Hindu and Sikh girls were being forcefully converted were "part of an arsenal of myths propagated by right-wing Hindu supremacist organisations in India". The Muslim Council of Britain issued a press release pointing out there was a lack of evidence of any forced conversions and suggested it was an underhand attempt to smear the British Muslim population.
An academic paper by Katy Sian published in the journal South Asian Popular Culture in 2011 explored the question of how "forced conversion narratives" arose around the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom. Sian, who reports that claims of conversion through courtship on campuses are widespread in the UK, says that rather than relying on actual evidence they primarily rest on the word of "a friend of a friend" or on personal anecdote. According to Sian, the narrative is similar to accusations of "white slavery" lodged against the Jewish community and foreigners to the UK and the US, with the former having ties to anti-semitism that mirror the Islamophobia betrayed by the modern narrative. Sian expanded on these views in 2013's Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations.