section_path: Sikh people
section_name: Sikh people
paragraph_text: Sikh people
  
  Estimates as of 2019 state that Sikhism has some 25–30 million followers worldwide. According to Pew Research, a think tank and research group based in Washington, DC, over 9-in-10 Sikhs are in India, but there are also sizable Sikh communities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Within India, the Sikh population is found in every state and union territory, but it is predominantly found in the northwestern and northern states. Only in the state of Punjab do Sikhs constitute a majority (58% of the total, per 2011 census). In addition to Punjab, the states and union territories of India where Sikhs constitute more than 1.5% of its population are Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir, all of which are in the northern half of India.
  
  Canada is home to the largest proportion of Sikhs, as a ratio of the country's total population, in the world, at 2.1%. Within Canada, Sikhs form 5.9% of the total population in the western province of British Columbia, representing the third-largest Sikh proportion amongst all global administrative divisions, behind only Punjab and Chandigarh in India. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Yukon hold the distinction of being three of the only four administrative divisions in the world with Sikhism as the second-most followed religion among the population.
  
  Prior to the 1947 partition of British India, millions of Sikhs lived in what later became Pakistan. Likewise, Sikhism was founded in what is now Pakistan, and some of the gurus were born near Lahore and in other parts of Pakistan. During the partition, Sikhs and Hindus left the newly created Muslim-majority Pakistan and mostly moved to Hindu-majority India—with some moving to Muslim-majority Afghanistan —while numerous Muslims in India moved to Pakistan. According to 2017 news reports, only about 20,000 Sikhs remain in Pakistan, and their population is dwindling (0.01% of the country's estimated 200 million population).