Punjabi diaspora

 ( Diaspora ) 

The Punjabi diaspora consists of the descendants of ethnic Punjabis who emigrated out of the Punjab region in Pakistan and India to the rest of the world. Punjabis are one of the largest ethnic groups in both the Pakistani and Indian diasporas. The Punjabi diaspora numbers around the world has been given between 3 and 5 million, mainly concentrated in Britain, Canada, the United States, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

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Afghanistan

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Bangladesh Many families from Punjab, Pakistan migrated to erstwhile East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh) as it was one country at the time. Some of these families chose to remain in Bangladesh after its independence. One such example is the family of Bangladeshi-Punjabi cricketer Junaid Siddique.

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Brazil Most Punjabis in Brazil are Sikhs.

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Australia Punjabis migrated to Australia from other parts of the Punjabi diaspora, as well from the state of Punjab itself. The Majority were Sikh and Hindu Punjabis are a minority.

Tony Ballantyne (2006). 9780822338246, Duke University Press. . ISBN 9780822338246

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Canada Punjabis make up approximately 2.6% of the Canadian population as per the 2021 Canadian Census. The largest Punjabi community in Canada is in Ontario, with 397,867 Punjabis as of 2021 (making up 2.84% of the overall population), while British Columbia is home to approximately 315,000 Punjabis (making up 6.41% of the overall population). 85% of South Asians in British Columbia are Punjabi Sikhs,

Mahendra Gaur (2025). 9788178353425, Gyan Publishing House. . ISBN 9788178353425

including former premier of British Columbia, Ujjal Dosanjh and former leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP), MP for Burnaby South, Jagmeet Singh.

+ Punjabi Canadians by province and territory (1991−2021) ! rowspan="2"	Province/territory ! colspan="2"	2021 ! colspan="2"	2016 ! colspan="2"	2011 ! colspan="2"	2006 ! colspan="2"	2001 ! colspan="2"	1996 ! colspan="2"	1991
Ontario	397,865		282,065		238,130		201,720		146,250		99,135		64,105
British Columbia	315,000		244,485		213,315		184,590		142,785		112,365		77,830
Alberta	126,385		90,485		62,815		44,480		28,460		20,660		15,165
Manitoba	42,820		22,900		12,555		7,600		6,305		5,445		4,150
Quebec	34,290		17,860		14,480		15,435		13,050		9,155		4,850
Saskatchewan	13,310		8,300		3,250		1,210		925		760		635
Nova Scotia	6,730		1,010		800		625		525		765		705
New Brunswick	2,475		205		115		130		135		80		55
Prince Edward Island	1,550		185		40		15		0		30		90
Newfoundland and Labrador	1,040		485		115		150		150		140		235
Yukon	490		150		105		100		90		95		50
Northwest Territories	175		105		30		25		35		60		65
Nunavut	30		15		15		10		10		N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

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Germany The Punjabi Sikh diaspora in Germany is around 15,000-21,000.

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Georgia In 2012, around 2,000 farmers from Punjab, India migrated to Georgia to farm. As of 2018 about 200 of them are still living in Tsnori, a town in Kakheti region.

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Greece The first arrival of Punjabis in Greece came through the British Indian Army during World War I and World War II. Since the 1990s, many Sikh migrants from Punjab came to Greece to work on shipping lines, in agriculture, construction, and as taxi drivers. During the 2015 European migrant crisis, many immigrants including Punjabis illegally entered Greece.

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Hong Kong

Among Hong Kong Indian adolescents, Punjabi is the third most common language after English and Cantonese.

Martha Carswell Pennington (1998). 9789622094185, Hong Kong University Press. . ISBN 9789622094185

The Punjabis were influential in the military, and in line with the British military thinking of the time (namely, the late 19th century and early 20th century) Punjabi Sikhs, Punjabi Hindus and Punjabi Muslims formed two separate regiments. The regiments were as follows:

• Punjab regiment: 25,000 soldiers (50% Muslim, 40% Hindu and 10% Sikh)
• Sikh Regiment: 10,000 soldiers (80% Sikh, 20% Hindu)

In 1939, Hong Kong's police force included 272 Europeans, 774 Indians (mainly Punjabis) and 1140 Han Chinese.

Robin Cohen (1995). 9780521444057, Cambridge University Press. . ISBN 9780521444057

Punjabis dominated Hong Kong's police force until the 1950s.

(2025). 9780306483219, Springer. . ISBN 9780306483219

From the 2006 government by-census results, it shows a population of roughly 20,444 Indians and roughly 11,111 Pakistanis residing at the former British territory.

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Iran Around 60 Punjabi Sikh families reside in Iran. The Punjabi language is also taught at Kendriya Vidyalaya Tehran, an Indian co-educational school in Baharestan District, Tehran.

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Italy The Punjabi Sikh diaspora in Italy is a growing minority in Italy. The country has the second biggest Sikh population in Europe after the United Kingdom. It is estimated that there are more than 200,000 Sikhs in Italy.

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Japan There are 71,000 Punjabis. In Japan 98% of the Punjabis are Sikh and 1.5% of the Punjabis are Christianity.

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Kenya Most Kenyan Asians are Gujaratis, but the second largest group are Punjabis.

Wilfred Whiteley (1974). 9780194361033, Oxford University Press. . ISBN 9780194361033

All three major religious groups (Sikh, Muslim and Hindu) are represented in the Punjabi population. The artisan Ramgharia caste used to be the largest group amongst the Sikhs.

Roger Sanjek (2014). 9780812290318, University of Pennsylvania Press. . ISBN 9780812290318

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Malaysia Although most Malaysian Indians are Tamil Malaysian, there were also many Punjabis that immigrated to Malaysia. They are known to be the third largest Indian ethnic group in Malaysia, after the Tamils and Malayalees. According to Amarjit Kaur as of 1993 there were 60, 000 Punjabis in Malaysia.

Amarjit Kaur (1993). 9780810826298, Scarecrow Press. . ISBN 9780810826298

Robin Cohen estimates the number of Malaysian Sikhs as 30, 000 (as of 1995). Recent figures state that there are 130,000 Sikhs in Malaysia.

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New Zealand

In New Zealand, Punjabis are one of the largest group of Indian New Zealanders.

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Persian Gulf states

In the Gulf states, the largest group among Pakistani expatriates are the Punjabis.

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Indonesia

Punjabis are the second largest Indian group in Indonesia, right after Tamil people, some of them are known as film producer, politician and athlete such as Manoj Punjabi, H. S. Dillon, Gurnam Singh, Ayu Azhari, and Musa Rajekshah. Punjabis in Indonesia adheres primarily to Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam, according to some source, the population of ethnic Punjabis are estimated to be around 35,000 to 60,000.

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Philippines

The Philippines has over 50,000 Punjabi Indians as recently as the year 2016, not including illegal Punjabi Indian immigrants. This makes the Philippines having the 6th highest population of Punjabi Indians in the world.

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Singapore

The third largest group among in 1980 were Punjabis (after Tamils - who form a majority of Indo-Singaporeans - and Malayalis), at 7.8% of the Indo-Singaporean population.

(1990). 9783871189388, Buske. . ISBN 9783871189388

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Spain

Between the 1980s and the 1990s, many Punjabis migrated to Spain due to relaxed immigration policies and a labour shortage.

Swaran Singh Kahlon (2020). 9789390035601, Manohar. ISBN 9789390035601

Many consisted of Sikh agricultural and manufacturing labourers, as well as business owners.

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Thailand

Most Indians in Thailand are Punjabis.

(2025). 9789812304186, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. . ISBN 9789812304186

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Trinidad and Tobago

The Sikhs community in Trinidad and Tobago, numbering at about 300, consists of the descendants of the few Punjabis who came during the indentureship period and Punjabi Sikhs who came in the twentieth and twenty-first century. The Sikhs have a gurdwara in Tunapuna dating back to 1929. There were also Punjabi Hindus and Punjabi Muslims who came during the indentured period as well in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Bhangra has also had a minor impact on the local Indian Bhojpuri-derived chutney music, with few songs mixing bhangra rhythms to create a chutney bhangra style.

The founder of Solo Beverage Company, one of the largest beverage companies in Trinidad and Tobago, Serjad Makmadeen (a.k.a. Joseph Charles), was born in 1910 in Princes Town to Makmadeen, a Punjabi Muslim who emigrated from Punjab in then British Raj to Trinidad, and his wife Rosalin Jamaria, a Dougla (mixed Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean heritage) who emigrated from Martinique. One of the most notorious gangster and pirate of the twentieth century in Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean, Boysie Singh was born in Woodbrook, Port of Spain in 1908 to a Punjabi Hindu father who immigrated as a fugitive to Trinidad to escape persecution in British India. Ranjit Kumar, one of the founding fathers of Trinidad and Tobago, a "Moulder of the Nation", and an Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonian civil rights activist, was born in 1912 in Rawalpindi, Punjab, British Raj (present-day Punjab, Pakistan) to a Punjabi Hindu family. He immigrated to Trinidad and Tobago in 1935 to distribute the first Indian films there and later became an engineer in the Trinidad and Tobago Works Department, where he was responsible for constructing numerous major roads and irrigation and drainage systems. He was also an alderman on the Port of Spain City Council and the founder of the Challenger newspaper, educating the public on engineering, irrigation and flooding problems.

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United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, around two-thirds of direct migrants from South Asia were Punjabi. The remaining third is mostly Gujarati people and Bengali people. They form a majority of both the South Asian British Sikh and Hindu communities.

Most "twice-migrants" - a term describing South Asian descendants who migrated to the United Kingdom not directly from South Asia (mainly from the Indian diaspora in Southeast Africa and other British Colonies) were also Punjabi people or Gujarati people.

(2025). 9780415939195, Taylor & Francis. . ISBN 9780415939195

United Kingdom is also known as the birthplace of bhangra music, a style of non traditional Punjabi music created by the Punjabi diaspora.

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United States

The earliest South Asian immigrants to the United States were Punjabis, who mostly immigrated to the West Coast, particularly California.

Parmatma Saran (2025). 9781575911113, Susquehanna University Press. . ISBN 9781575911113

Half of Pakistani Americans are Punjabis.http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Pakistani-Americans.html - Under "Language" 85% of the early Indian immigrants to the US were Sikhs, although they were incorrectly branded by White Americans as "Hindus". 90% of Indians who settled in the Central Valley of California were Punjabi Sikhs. The first Asian Americans and member of a non-Abrahamic faith elected to the US Congress was Dalip Singh Saund, a Punjabi Sikh.

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See also

• Sikh diaspora

Categories: Diaspora, Pakistani Diaspora, Ethnic Groups In India

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