Abstract
The history of Indian and Pakistani presence in Britain is long as it dates back to the seventeenth century. Yet the influence of the South Asian community was almost insignificant at that time, for its size remained very small. Only after the Second World War (1939-1945) did South Asian migration to Britain develop into a mass phenomenon. Both reconstruction and the expansion of the economy during the 1950s and 1960s provoked a great need of labour force that the local population was not able to fulfil. The British government encouraged the entry of workers from the former colonies around the world and large-scale immigration of Indian and Pakistani labour started. By 1945, migrants from the newly independent British colonies, such as India and Pakistan , came to Great Britain to settle for a short period of time. In the beginning, they were single young men, attracted by the British lifestyle and the employment opportunities that Britain could offer even to unskilled workers. Most of them knew already someone who had come earlier and could rely on a network of contacts. They lived in simple and crowded accommodation, worked long hours under poor conditions and saved for their families back home. They came as sojourners with no intention of settling, thus they were willing to accept the poor living conditions and refrained from establishing their own ethnic and religious communities. But gradually their stay in Britain was extended, wives and children were brought to Britain, and Indian and Pakistani communities started to develop.
The South Asian migrants in Britain consisted in a number of different groups of people differing in their ethnic origin, language, religion, traditions, customs, dress and education. However, when we consider the size of India and Pakistan, it is surprising that emigration was limited to very small and confined areas such as Punjab, Gujarat and six areas in the two parts of Pakistan (see Appendix A, p. III). Four-fifth of the Indian migration to Britain were Sikhs . They came from two districts in Eastern Punjab - Jullundur and Hoshiarpur. They were the most mobile people in India and they were considered as pioneers. After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948, they and the Hindus were driven out of their farms across the new frontier. In the exchange of population, millions of refugees flooded into the Eastern Punjab where they took the smaller and sometimes poorer Muslim holdings. Jullundur had the highest percentage of poor landowners and also the highest population density in the Punjab . Therefore it is not surprising that people in that area were very likely to migrate to Britain.
