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How London’s Southall became ‘Little Punjab’

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.

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