Scotland’s First Gurdwara

On 25 March 1952 three members of Glasgow’s Sikh community, Jiwan Singh Pall, Tersem Lal and Jagar Singh Natoowala, purchased a top-floor flat in a tenement building located on 79 Portland Street in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. The property became the site of Scotland and Glasgow’s first gurdwara.

Whilst little is known about Jagar Singh Natoowala and Tersem Lal, Jiwan Singh Pall’s experiences of settling in Glasgow have been well documented by his family. Jiwan Singh Pall was born in Galothian, Sialkot, Punjab. In 1916, at the age of 31, he left Punjab and migrated to Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam). Pall travelled widely, including to Burma and Portugal. By 1937 he and his son, Puran Singh Pall, decided to move to Britain. They initially settled outside London before moving to Birmingham, where father and son worked as pedlars. According to Jiwan Singh Pall’s grandson, Gurdev Azad Singh Pall, their family archive includes pedlar licences from Londonderry and Manchester, as well as driving licences from Londonderry, suggesting that Jiwan and Puran Singh Pall travelled widely in search of work. During the early 1940s, Puran worked for BSA, a Birmingham-based arms manufacturer which created munitions and vehicle parts during the Second World War.

In 1942 Jiwan and Puran decided to join other family members in Glasgow, given the discrimination they faced in England. Puran married Sant Ajit Kaur Pall, and their daughter Trishna was born in 1953. Jiwan owned a clothing shop in Edinburgh, as well as property in Dyce, Aberdeen. The money generated from his businesses, along with funding from Tersem Lal and Jagar Singh Natoowala, enabled the purchase of a space that would become Scotland’s first gurdwara.

The small local Sikh community was involved in developing the gurdwara. Those who contributed financially to its growth included local Muslims such as Noor Mohammed Tanda, the business partner of Atta Muhammed Ashrif who founded the Jamiat Ittihad ul Muslimin. The site was a place of worship and social gatherings, particularly on Sundays when days off work allowed community members to meet one another in a shared space. Those who frequented the gurdwara were often members of other organizations such as the Indian Workers' Association, and social gatherings among Sikhs also took place in Curzon Cinema, for example, which would show Indian films for local Gorbals residents.

79 Portland Street was demolished during the 1960s, when the local council enacted a programme of regeneration in the Gorbals. There are currently four gurdwaras in Glasgow, which offer structured teaching to the community’s young people and host open days for people from other religious groups. Sikhs from across Scotland often frequent Glasgow’s gurdwaras.