Abstract
The geography of Punjab, a land-locked region divided between India and Pakistan, makes it an unlikely player in oceanic sojourns. But imperial interventions in Punjab in the middle of the 19th century triggered movements from Punjab that inserted this region in the littoral narrative of the Indian Ocean. Unlike the movements of lascars and traders, who have been central to the revisionist histories of the Indian Ocean, those from Punjab have not featured in oceanic dialogues. The absence of Sikhs in Indian Ocean studies is largely due to the silence of Sikh soldiers, skilled craftsmen and cultivators with largely rural roots who were uprooted to strange lands. The confusion of Sikhs with Hindus, Muslims and, even Afghans, in the colonial era, as well as the classification of Punjabi Muslims as Pakistani in the post-colonial, further problematizes the Sikh migration narrative. Drawing on a wide range of official and unofficial historical sources, this essay argues that twin developments in Punjab, namely the construction of Sikhs as ‘a martial race’ and their integration into the imperial capitalist economy, connects the movements of soldiers and policemen to Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements and Kenya with those of skilled artisans to Mombasa and Uganda. 
 Keywords: Sikhs, Indian Ocean, labour migration, cultural identity
Highlights
The geography of Punjab, a land-locked region divided between India and Pakistan, makes it an unlikely player in oceanic sojourns
Aggarwal’s reminiscences suggest a chain migration from Maur Mandi through the subsequent settlement of Sikhs from the village and an intersection of caste and sectarian boundaries that explains the confusion of Sikhs with Hindus, and even Pathans, in the minds of their Australian or Californian hosts
This essay shows that embedding divergent narratives in the frame tale of the initiating impulse for migration, namely the socioeconomic transformations in 19th century Punjab, can link apparently disconnected Sikh migration stories to different parts of the world
Summary
The geography of Punjab, a land-locked region divided between India and Pakistan, makes it an unlikely player in oceanic sojourns. Imperial interventions in Punjab in the middle of the 19th century triggered movements from Punjab that inserted this region in the littoral narrative of the Indian Ocean. Unlike the movements of lascars and traders from coastal regions, which have been central to the revisionist histories of the Indian Ocean, Sikh migrations from Punjab have not featured in oceanic dialogues. In the absence of written documentation, the buried narrative of Sikh journeys, must be reconstructed through statistical data in colonial records, anecdotal references in imperial texts, memoirs of colonial administrators, oral histories, photographs, interviews and Punjabi folk genres. Along with British administrators’ reports and memoirs, colonial documents such as the Enlisted Record below constitute valuable sources of information. You are in tatters There you’ll wear a suit
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