From the 1900s until the late 1960s, official records and popular journalism used many terms to refer to Sikh immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, but the most common referents in North America were “Hindu” and “East Indian,” which were probably used more as geographical locators than cultural labels. Unfortunately, being designated “Hindu” is deeply offensive to many Sikhs, who consider themselves and their religion as separate from the dominant spiritual traditions of Hinduism. The term was wholly inaccurate when used in a religious sense to categorize the early Sikhs and Muslims from the Punjab region of northwest India, who formed the bulk of the immigration to America until the post-1965 period. Sikhs are followers of a religion founded by Guru Nanak in the fourteenth century C.E. and Muslims are followers of Islamic traditions arising in the sixth century C.E.
In addition, there are historical and contemporary sources that use “Indian,” “Indian American,”...
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About this entry Cite this entryLa Brack, B. (2005). Sikhs in the United States. In: Ember, M., Ember, C.R., Skoggard, I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_112
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