The Gurdwara at Novellara Opens

Why there are Sikhs in the Po valley

Italy holds one of the largest Sikh populations in Europe, and on every estimate the largest after Britain’s, but nobody has counted it. Britain’s 2021 census counted 524,140 Sikhs in England and Wales;⁵ Italy publishes no census figure, so every number there is an estimate, and the estimates run from about 100,000 to about 220,000.^2,3,4 They differ because of where they come from. The research centre CESNUR puts the figure at about 100,000, and academic estimates from 2012 and 2013 sit near that low end, at about 84,000 to 115,000; the higher figures, 150,000 to 220,000, are press reports from 2017 to 2023, which often repeat one another, and some trace back to community event organisers.^2,3,4

Most Sikhs in the Po valley work in agriculture, mostly with cattle, and the province of Reggio Emilia has the highest rate of Indian immigration in Italy. Others work in factories, drive trucks, run shops, or work the fields, as many do in Lazio, south of Rome.¹

The reason is cheese, in part. Parmigiano-Reggiano is made from milk drawn twice daily, and the cows are milked every day of the year. The BBC reported that in the 1980s, with the economy booming, many Italians were turning their backs on work they saw as menial; the first major wave of Sikh immigration came then, and the majority of those who arrived chose dairy farming.⁶ The milker has to be on hand when a calf is born, so the job usually comes with a house next to the farm.¹ The research does not put this down to anything inborn: Rossi concludes that Sikh immigrants work in dairy for historical and economic factors, not for a natural or ethnic vocation, and rejects the explanations that Punjab looks like the Po valley or that cows are sacred.¹ Sikh workers milk the cows; a farmer quoted by the BBC stresses that those in his sheds do not make the cheese.⁶

A building of their own

Novellara, in the province of Reggio Emilia, holds one of the densest Sikh concentrations in the country. Its gurdwara was built with the community’s own money and private donations and was inaugurated in 2000 by Romano Prodi.^1,6 Rossi describes it as standing in the town’s industrial estate, among warehouses, and outwardly similar to them.¹

It is sometimes described as the first gurdwara in Europe. That is not right, and the correction is worth making: London’s Khalsa Jatha dates to 1908. The sources read for this entry do not establish that Novellara’s was the first gurdwara in Italy or the first purpose-built one, so this entry does not say so. A 2024 research note says about 95 percent of Italy’s Sikh temples are in reused buildings such as warehouses, shops and houses.³

The same note counts 58 of Europe’s 140 gurdwaras in Italy, while the press says about 60.^2,3