Around a quarter of India's Sikhs live outside Punjab.
Haryana has a large Sikh population, particularly in Sirsa, Fatehabad and Kurukshetra districts, from the canal settlements and from 1947. Rajasthan's is in Ganganagar and Hanumangarh. Uttarakhand's is in the Terai. Delhi's is largely of 1947 refugee origin and its own committee runs its gurdwaras.
Maharashtra has the old community at Nanded around Takht Sri Hazur Sahib, several generations deep, speaking a Punjabi that separated from Punjab's three hundred years ago. Bihar has the community at Patna Sahib.
The Assam and north-east Sikh communities include the Assamese Sikhs of Barkola, descended from soldiers who came with Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji's forces in the 1820s and stayed, who speak Assamese and follow Sikh practice.
The Sikligar and Vanjara Sikh communities, descended from arms-makers and carriers of the Guru period, are scattered across central and southern India in very poor circumstances and have almost no institutional support.
The Panth is much less Punjabi than the Panth's own account of itself suggests.
Sikh populations outside Punjab in India are large: in Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and the north east.
Many are agricultural settlements: the Terai allotments, the Ganganagar colonies, the Sikhs of the Kutch and of Madhya Pradesh who bought land in the 1970s.
Their institutional life is separate. Delhi has its own gurdwara committee by statute and the other states have their own bodies, and none of them answers to Amritsar.