Southallਸਾਊਥਹਾਲ

Southall is a large suburban town in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, England, 10.7 miles (17.2 km) west of Charing Cross, with 78,253 residents in the 2021 census. Called Little India and Little Punjab, it is home to London's largest Sikh community: Sikhs made up 28.5 per cent of the town's population in 2021, the largest share of any religion, and parts of Southall became home to the largest Punjabi community outside the Indian subcontinent.

Where is Southall, and why do Punjabis live there?

Southall stands on the Uxbridge Road in the far west of London, one of the seven major towns of the Borough of Ealing. It divides into three parts: the mostly residential streets around Lady Margaret Road at Dormers Wells, the main commercial centre on the High Street and Southall Broadway, and Old Southall or Southall Green to the south, around the railway station and the Grand Union Canal, which separates the town from Hayes. Its railway station, whose name signs are bilingual in English and Gurmukhi, runs trains to London Paddington, Heathrow Airport and Reading.

Punjabis live here because the work was here. From the 1950s the town's local factories and its closeness to the expanding Heathrow Airport attracted large numbers of Asian immigrants, and the story local history tells is precise about the start: in 1950 the first group of South Asians arrived in Southall, reputedly recruited to work in a local factory owned by a former British Indian Army officer. The families who followed built the shops, gurdwaras and businesses of the Broadway, and each new arrival since has found a town where Punjabi is spoken on the street. Southall is part of London, and is listed under Punjabi places in the United Kingdom.

What do the numbers say?

The 2021 census religion table for Southall puts Sikhism first, at 28.5 per cent of the town, ahead of Islam at 24.1 per cent, Christianity at 22.6 per cent and Hinduism at 14.2 per cent. No other town in Britain has a Sikh plurality on this scale, which is why Southall, rather than any city centre, is the place census stories about Punjabi Britain usually begin.

The borough figures behind the town tell the same story. Ealing, the borough that contains Southall, counted 28,491 Sikhs in 2021, 7.8 per cent of its 367,115 residents, and Ealing Council's census briefing notes that Ealing has the highest number of people identifying as Sikh across London. For language, 17,286 Ealing residents gave Panjabi as their main language in 2021, 4.9 per cent of the borough, making Panjabi the most common main language in Ealing after English. India was also the borough's largest non-UK country of birth, with 31,819 Ealing residents born there.

The Broadway: a Punjabi high street

The Broadway, the town's stretch of the Uxbridge Road, together with the High Street and King Street in Old Southall, holds one of the largest South Asian shopping areas in the region: jewellers, fabric and clothing shops, sweet centres, restaurants and music shops serving customers who travel in from across London and beyond. The Punjabi presence is written into the town itself, from the bilingual station signs to Desi Radio, which broadcasts predominantly in Punjabi across west London on 1602 AM, and the Punjabi language newspaper Des Pardes, long published for the community.

Southall's sound travelled as far as its food. The bhangra singer Juggy D is from Southall, and the singer Jay Sean was raised in the town, two of the musicians who carried its Punjabi streets into British pop. Even its pub history is Punjabi: the Glassy Junction in Southall was the first pub in the United Kingdom to accept Indian rupees as payment, before it closed in 2011.

Gurdwaras and community life

Southall has ten Sikh gurdwaras, more than any comparable town in Britain. The largest is run by Sri Guru Singh Sabha Southall. Its own history records that the first Sikhs of the 1940s and 1950s worshipped in homes, then in halls such as Shackleton Hall and at 11 Beaconsfield Road. A second group, Sri Guru Nanak Singh Sabha, formed as Malaysian and Singaporean Sikhs arrived, and in 1964 the two groups merged as Sri Guru Singh Sabha Southall and opened their first gurdwara at The Green.

That Sabha now runs the largest Sikh temple in London. The gurdwara on Guru Nanak Road, the old Havelock Road, opened on Sunday 30 March 2003, built for 17.5 million pounds funded by donations from the local Sikh community, with a main hall seating up to 3,000. Together with its second gurdwara on Park Avenue, where the Sabha moved in 1997, it receives over 15,000 worshippers and visitors a week, and its langar hall can serve as many as 20,000 free meals a week. The Sabha also set up Khalsa Primary School in Southall, and every spring the town's Vaisakhi celebrations fill the streets between its gurdwaras.

Southall is the town that Punjabi Britain built first and built deepest: a factory and airport workforce of the 1950s became, over two generations, London's largest Sikh community, with its own high street, its own radio voice and one of the largest gurdwaras outside India. It sits inside the wider story of London, the community's British capital. For the full map, see Punjabi places in the United Kingdom.