Punjab has seen people arrive, depart and return for centuries. Punjabis travelled as traders, soldiers, labourers, pilgrims and settlers, forming communities beyond Punjab long before the word diaspora was commonly used.

British rule transformed these older patterns of movement. After the annexation of Punjab in 1849, military recruitment, imperial labour networks and expanding transport routes carried Punjabis across the British Empire. Some served in distant armies and police forces. Others worked on farms, railways and plantations, established businesses or travelled in search of land and opportunity. Punjabi communities appeared across Southeast Asia, East Africa, Australia and North America - often in places that had never previously been connected so directly to Punjab.

Migration was not always freely chosen. Punjabis encountered racial exclusion, restrictive immigration laws, exploitation and pressure to prove that they belonged. The Partition of Punjab in 1947 displaced millions within South Asia, while the decades that followed created new routes towards Britain, Europe, the Gulf and elsewhere. Family sponsorship and community networks gradually turned individual journeys into permanent settlements.

Wherever Punjabis travelled, they carried parts of Punjab with them - its languages, religions, food, music, customs and memories of home. These traditions did not remain unchanged. They adapted to new surroundings, crossed community boundaries and developed into distinct forms of Punjabi identity abroad. Migration also continued to shape Punjab itself through returning travellers, remittances, political ideas and connections maintained across generations.

This series traces the Punjabi diaspora from its early foundations to the global communities of the present day. It follows the forces that moved Punjabis across the world, the challenges they encountered and the lives they built after arrival.

The Punjabi diaspora is not one story of departure. It is a history of movement, displacement, survival and belonging - of Punjab leaving home, carrying itself across the world, and becoming something new without entirely letting go of what came before.