Bigger India
How London’s Southall became ‘Little Punjab’
A new project explores the largest Punjabi community outside India – from possibly Britain’s first Indian shop to race riots and the fight for rights.
When he opened for business in 1954, Pritam Singh Sangha could never have envisaged that he was kickstarting a consumer revolution that would establish the Asian corner shop in the British landscape, nor that Southall would become the country’s premier Asian town, dubbed Chota Punjab – Little Punjab.
A gregarious man, Sangha (pictured below) was a well-known and popular figure. Not only did he own the only Indian shop in Southall, west London – and probably the country at the time – but he was also one of the first Punjabis to make the area his home, in 1951.