Sikhism in Pakistan

Sikhism in Pakistan has an extensive heritage and history, although Sikhs form a small community in Pakistan today. Most Sikhs live in the province of Punjab, a part of the larger Punjab region where the religion originated in the Middle Ages, with some also residing in Peshawar in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, is located in Pakistan's Punjab province. Moreover, the place where Guru Nanak Dev died, the Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib is also located in the same province. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sikh community became a major political power in Punjab, with Sikh leader Maharaja Ranjit Singh founding the Sikh Empire which had its capital in Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan today. According to the 1941 census, the Sikh population comprised roughly 1.67 million persons or 6.2 percent of the total population in the region that would ultimately become Pakistan, notably concentrated in West Punjab, within the contemporary province of Punjab, Pakistan, where the Sikh population stood at roughly 1.53 million persons or 8.8 percent of the total population. At the time of the Partition of India in 1947, it is estimated that the Sikh population increased to over 2 million persons in the region which became Pakistan with significant populations existing in the largest cities in the Punjab such as Lahore, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad (then Lyallpur). After Partition of Punjab, Sikh population in Pakistan felt unsaved due to the occurrence of severe riots and mass scale persecution over there and soon almost entirety of the Sikh population left Pakistan's West Punjab for India's East Punjab and Delhi. In the decades following Pakistan's formation in 1947, the Sikh community began to re-organize, forming the Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (PSGPC) to represent the community and protect the holy sites and heritage of the Sikh religion in Pakistan. It is headed by Satwant Singh.