Italy's First Purpose-Built Gurdwara Opens at Novellara

Why there are Sikhs in the Po valley

Italy holds one of the largest Sikh populations in Europe — commonly estimated at around 200,000, second only to Britain — and it is concentrated not in Rome or Milan but in the flat agricultural country of Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy.^2,3

The reason is cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano is made from milk drawn twice daily, every day of the year. From the late 1980s Italian dairy farms could not find local workers willing to keep that schedule, and Punjabi men — many from farming families — took the work.¹ Sikhs became structurally important to the production of a food that functions as a symbol of Italian national identity. Italians are often surprised to learn it; the community has been there long enough that surprise is no longer reasonable.

A building of their own

Novellara, a town of about thirteen thousand in the province of Reggio Emilia, holds one of the densest Sikh concentrations in the country. Its gurdwara was financed entirely by the community and by private donation, and inaugurated in 2000 in the presence of Romano Prodi.^1,2

It is regularly described as the first gurdwara in Europe. That is not right, and the correction is worth making: London’s Khalsa Jatha dates to 1908. Novellara’s real distinction is as a purpose-built gurdwara — designed and constructed as one, rather than converted from a house, a mill or a chapel, which is how nearly every earlier European gurdwara came into being.

Italy now has roughly sixty gurdwaras.² The Novellara Nagar Kirtan, which processes through the streets of an Italian market town each spring, has become one of the larger Sikh public events in Europe.