Sikhism in Australia

Australian Sikhs

Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara (Temple) Glenwood/Parklea, Sydney
Total population
72,000 (2011) Census results
Regions with significant populations
Victoria  · New South Wales

Sikhism is a small but growing minority religion in Australia, that can trace its origins in the nation to the 1830s. The Sikhs form one of the largest subgroups of Indian Australians with 72,000 adherents according to the 2011 census. Having grown from 12,000 in 1996, 17,000 in 2001 and 26,500 in 2006. Most adherents can trace their ancestry back to the Punjab region of South Asia, which is currently divided between India and Pakistan.

It is difficult to separate the history of early Sikh arrival to Australia from that of the numerous other religious faiths that were represented the people of British India and more specifically the Punjab province. It appears that the first Sikhs arrived in the country somewhere in the late 1830s, when the penal transport of convicts to New South Wales (which at the time also consisted of Queensland and Victoria) was slowing, before being abolished altogether in 1840. The lack of manual labourers from the convict assignment system led to an increase demand for foreign labour, which was partly filled by the arrival of Sikhs. The Sikhs came from an agrarian background in India, and thus fulfilled their tasks as farm labourers on cane fields and shepherds on sheep stations well.

Sikhs were recorded as being present on the gold fields of Victoria during the time of the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s and '60s. A census from 1857 showed that there were 277 'Hindus and Sikhs' (although they would have mostly been Sikh) in Victoria. From the 1860s onwards, cameleers, commonly called 'Ghans' were brought to Australia to help explore and settle Australia's vast arid interior. While the Ghans consisted mainly of Muslims from Afghanistan and its surrounds, a sizeable minority were Sikhs from Punjab. The Ghans set up camel-breeding stations and rest house outposts, known as caravanserai, throughout inland Australia, creating a permanent link between the coastal cities and the remote cattle and sheep grazing stations until about the 1930s, when they were largely replaced by the automobile.