Jobs
The traditional Bhat profession of itinerant salesman and taxi drivers was useful to those arriving in the UK, and was "a skill with considerable potential". At first most Bhat, like some other Sikhs, worked either as doorstep or market traders (working with the Khatri community), but some settled in big cities like Leeds or Birmingham, gave up self-employment and took waged jobs in industry. (At this time many educated immigrants to Britain had difficulty finding employment suited to their qualifications and experience, because of racial and/or cultural prejudice.)
Bhat traders gradually moved into other roles as self-employed businessmen, often specialising in retailing. By the end of the 1950s selling door-to-door was less common and many British Bhat Sikhs moved towards commercial enterprises like market stalls, shops, supermarkets and wholesale warehouses. Nowadays the younger Bhata generation are represented in many varied professions from doctors to accountants, from engineers to lawyers. Also very well known taxi drivers.
In the 1920s some men travelled to Britain to work as door-to-door salesmen, most leaving their families in the Punjab to begin with. By the time of the Second World War there were a few hundred Sikhs clustered in British seaports like Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton and Hull. Some returned to India when war broke out, but others stayed on and used contacts with Punjabi merchant seamen to import scarce goods.
‘One group of Sikhs who kept their turbans were a group called Bhartedas (sic)’.
The Bhat Sikhs are the pioneer Sikh community to migrate to Britain. Whilst most men from other Sikh communities were finding a foothold in Britain in the early 1950‘s, the Bhats had already established themselves as a settled community all over Britain in port towns and cities. Most Sikh preachers amongst the Sikh community today belong to the Bhatra caste.
Read more about this topic: Bhatra, Bhat Sikhs in The United Kingdom
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