Pahurat, Bangkok's Little India: History of a Sikh Quarter

A few steps from Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown, a handful of streets in the old city sell saris, gold braid and lengths of fabric. Above them rises the golden dome of a large Sikh temple. Pahurat is often reduced to its nickname of ‘Little India’. Yet its history is made of several layers: a Vietnamese enclave according to several accounts, a royal road opened under Rama V, then a textile market run by families from the Punjab. Tracing these strata helps us understand how Bangkok fashioned its neighbourhoods. They also shed light on what the municipality now wants to make of this one.

Large Sikh prayer hall with red floral carpets, crystal chandeliers and a central gilded canopy sheltering the holy book.

Locating Pahurat: on the edge of the royal city

Pahurat is written Phahurat in the official RTGS transcription (พาหุรัด in Thai). The name refers to a small quarter that grew up around the street of the same name. It lies in the subdistrict of Wang Burapha Phirom, in Phra Nakhon district, on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya River. Phra Nakhon is the historic heart of the capital. It was here that the kings of the Chakri dynasty established, from 1782 onwards, their palace, their great monasteries and their administration, on what is known as Rattanakosin Island: an area enclosed by the river and by canals dug to defend it.

On a map, the quarter fits within a triangle of streets. Travel guides define it by Phahurat, Chakkraphet and Tri Phet roads. It lies just west of Yaowarat, the great Chinese commercial district. The khlong (canal) Ong Ang separates the two. This stretch of the old moat that once encircled the city now marks, at this point, the boundary between Phra Nakhon district and Samphanthawong district, to which Yaowarat belongs. Thailand NOW, a cultural outreach publication, places Pahurat in Bangkok's ‘old town’. It sees the proximity of Yaowarat, one of the liveliest merchant districts in the country, as a source of its vitality.

This position is not incidental. Pahurat lies on the inner side of the old urban boundary, and therefore within the royal city. But it faces towards the merchant city. One might see it as a hinge between two spatial logics: that of power, ordered around the palace, and that of trade, which developed at its gates. This is an urban planner's reading, not a fact documented by the available sources. It nonetheless helps explain why merchants found fertile ground here.

The boundaries of ‘Little India’ are, moreover, shifting. During a festival reported by the Bangkok Post, the ‘Little India community’ stretched from Phahurat Road and Khlong Ong Ang to the Saphan Lek area, further north along the same canal. The lived quarter therefore spills beyond the triangle of tourist maps.

Before the Indians: a ground of successive migrations

The point deserves to be made at the outset, as the community outlet Masala Thai does: Phahurat did not begin as an Indian quarter. According to encyclopaedic entries and the same outlet, the area is said to have first housed an enclave of Annamese, that is to say Vietnamese, immigrants. They are said to have arrived in Siam during the Thonburi period (1767–1782), under the reign of King Taksin, who had established his capital on the western bank of the river.

Masala Thai adds a second episode. During the laying-out of Rattanakosin, after the capital moved to the eastern bank in 1782, many Vietnamese families are said to have been resettled in the Phahurat–Tri Phet–Ban Mo area. The scenario is plausible. The founding of the new capital was accompanied by population movements: the best-known episode is that of the Chinese merchants, moved from the site of the future Grand Palace to Sampheng, the nucleus of present-day Yaowarat. But for Pahurat, this information rests solely on secondary sources. It awaits confirmation by historians' research or archives. Present-day material traces of this Vietnamese presence are not documented in the sources consulted.

This foundation, uncertain as it is, invites us to read Pahurat as a palimpsest: an urban surface on which successive groups settled, traded and left — or did not leave — their mark. In a capital built largely by communities from elsewhere, the case is in no way exceptional.

A royal road in the Bangkok of Rama V

The quarter owes its name and its shape to a street. According to Thailand NOW, Phahurat Road is among the oldest in Bangkok. It is said to have been built during the reign of Rama V, King Chulalongkorn (1868–1910). Several travel guides put forward the date of 1898. It is likely, but no institutional source consulted confirms it: it should therefore be regarded as probable, not established.

The context, by contrast, is well known. During the second half of the 19th century, Bangkok gradually changed from a water city, where people travelled mainly by canal, into a city of roads. The first major Western-style street, Charoen Krung, had been opened under Rama IV. The reign of Rama V multiplied new thoroughfares, including Yaowarat Road itself, close by. To open a street was to create frontages, building plots and therefore shop sites. The arrival of merchants shortly after Phahurat Road opened, reported by several guides, fits logically into this movement. The causal link nonetheless remains an interpretation.

A princess, a bracelet: the name and its uncertainties

The word phahurat denotes, according to an encyclopaedic entry, a gold bracelet worn on the upper arm. Like many Siamese princely names, it belongs to a learned vocabulary of Indian origin. It is one of history's ironies: this name with Indian roots predates the settlement of the Indian community and has no connection with it.

The name comes from a royal child, but sources differ as to who this was. Thailand NOW, the most institutional source in the file, writes that the street was built in memory of a daughter of Rama V, Princess Phahurat Manimai (often transcribed Bahurada Manimaya), who died young. Another website concurs. Two tourist guides, on the other hand, attribute the name to a son of the king, ‘Somdet Chaofa Pahurat Maneemai’. The daughter version seems the more solid, all the more so as the feminine form of the name matches the princely title cited. It nevertheless needs to be checked against the royal genealogies. The princess's dates, her mother's name and the way the street was financed are not documented here and are therefore not put forward.

Merchants from the Punjab: the making of a community

According to the guides consulted, Indians are said to have settled along the new street shortly after it opened. The Travelfish website specifies that a large part of the present community descends from Sikhs from the Punjab, a region in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent, who arrived in the early 20th century. Another website describes the commercial origins of the phenomenon: Indian cloth merchants set up business there. As their trade prospered, the area became a renowned textile market and a centre of Indian commerce.

In the current state of documentation, there is no study allowing us to say precisely why these families chose Siam. The general context is known: at the turn of the 20th century, Punjabis moved widely through the commercial and military networks of the British Empire in South-East Asia. Siam, which remained independent, was not part of that empire, but it was in close contact with its neighbouring territories. Linking Pahurat precisely to these movements remains a hypothesis.

Today's community is not uniformly Sikh. Thailand NOW describes residents who are mostly Thais of South Asian descent — Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. One should therefore speak of Thais of Indian origin rather than ‘Indians’: many were born in Thailand, into families settled there for several generations. No recent, reliable figure for their numbers could be established.

From weekly worship to a six-storey gurdwara

The quarter's central monument is the Siri Guru Singh Sabha gurdwara, located, according to the Expique website, at 571 Chakkraphet Road. The Bangkok Post presents it as a six-storey Sikh temple at the heart of the Pahurat community. The building, white highlighted with gold, is crowned by a golden dome.

Its earlier history is known, in this file, only through a tourist website. The first worshippers are said to have gathered initially in temporary premises, where prayers were held only once a week. In 1913, as the community grew, it reportedly took a long lease on a larger wooden house on the corner of Phahurat Road. Several guides then agree in dating the present temple to 1932, without specifying whether this refers to the start or the completion of the works. This trajectory illustrates the community's putting down of roots: from the worship of men passing through to a lasting institution that owns its premises.

The gurdwara is often presented as one of the largest Sikh temples outside India. Travelfish goes so far as to call it the second largest. No verifiable source confirms this ranking, which should be taken as a promotional claim rather than a fact.

Cloth as the common thread

If the gurdwara is the spiritual heart of Pahurat, textiles are its economic backbone. Thailand NOW sums up this specialisation: fabric shops first, then haberdashers, saris and South Asian restaurants. The continuity is remarkable. The trade that, according to the available accounts, drew the first Indian merchants is still the one that defines the quarter more than a century later.

The commercial landscape retains the memory of its own transformations. The India Emporium, at 345 Chakkraphet Road, lines up shops across four floors, almost all devoted to textiles, according to Expique. It replaced a former department store known as ATM, the date of whose disappearance has not been established. The name nevertheless survives in that of soi (lane) ATM, which leads to the gurdwara. This small toponymic detail shows how names in everyday use outlive the buildings that gave rise to them.

The India Emporium has also changed the way the temple is seen. It covers an entire side of the gurdwara, so that the golden dome is now visible from the street only from certain angles. Commercial densification has thus altered the visual place of the religious monument within the quarter.

On the other side of the quarter, Old Siam Plaza adopts a style inspired by the old colonial era. Its history could not be documented: date of construction, developer, possible link to an earlier market. It will need to be clarified. The same applies to a claim recurrent in the guides, according to which a North Indian restaurant opened in the quarter in the 1960s was ‘the first Indian restaurant in Thailand’. The claim is appealing but unverified.

Finally, Thailand NOW highlights a tension peculiar to the quarter: marked recent urbanisation, with the arrival of shopping centres, while a large part of the population maintains a distinct way of life. Pahurat is not a frozen stage set. It is a merchant quarter that is changing while keeping its community landmarks.

Two ‘Little Indias’ and a municipal label: Pahurat today

A common confusion must first be cleared up: Bangkok has at least two neighbourhoods associated with India. Alongside the Sikhs of Pahurat, a Hindu community originating from South India is settled in Silom, in Bang Rak district, further south-east. It is there, and not in Pahurat, that the Sri Maha Mariamman Hindu temple stands, which some blogs wrongly place in ‘Little India’. The two neighbourhoods have different origins, languages and religious practices. Merging them under a single label erases the diversity of South Asian presences in the capital.

Yet it is precisely a label that the public authorities now intend to enshrine. In 2024, according to the Bangkok Post, the Bangkok Metropolitan Council announced its intention to promote the Pahurat area as ‘Little India’ in order to attract visitors from around the world. Its chairman, Surajit Phongsingwitthaya, presented the project after a meeting with the Indian ambassador, Nagesh Singh. According to him, it was to lead to a memorandum of understanding making Bangkok and Mumbai twin cities. The programme mentioned includes landscaping, restaurants, architecture and celebrations reflecting ‘authentic Indian culture’, as well as festivals, markets, pavements and signage. The aim is openly stated: an instrument of soft power and a driver for the local economy. The concrete follow-up to the project — the signing of an agreement or works carried out — is not known at this stage.

The project raises a classic question of urban heritage. Enhancing a neighbourhood can improve public space, give visibility to a long-discreet community and support its businesses. But promoting ‘authentic Indian culture’ in Pahurat amounts to selecting a single layer of its history. This choice risks leaving in the shadows the Vietnamese enclave mentioned in the accounts, the royal road and its Siamese dedication, and the religious plurality of today's residents. It also risks turning a lived-in quarter into a themed showcase. The success of such an approach will depend largely on the room left to residents and community institutions, starting with the gurdwara, in defining it.

Changes in transport bear on these issues. The extension of the metro towards the old city, with nearby stations such as Sam Yot and Sanam Chai, brings Pahurat closer to the visitor circuits of Rattanakosin. Its precise effects on the quarter remain to be documented.

Pahurat sums up, on a small scale, the making of Bangkok. A royal city opened roads on its margins. Communities from elsewhere found a place there through trade. Names, buildings and customs have been layered on top of one another without ever entirely erasing what came before. The nickname ‘Little India’ captures part of the truth. Understanding the quarter also means bearing in mind everything that the nickname leaves unsaid.