‘Indian-origin people largest non-white ethnic group in UK’

Indian-origin people remain both the largest Asian ethnic group and largest non-white ethnic group in the UK and now make up 3.1% of the population at 1.8 million, the latest data from the 2021 UK census has revealed.

Of usual residents in England and Wales, 1.8 million chose “Asian” as their high-level category for ethnicity and then “Indian” as their sub-category, meaning the number of British Indians has increased 32% compared to when the last census was done in 2011 when the figure was 1.4 million.

Pakistani-origin people make up the second largest non-white ethnic group at 1.5 million, a 41% increase on 2011, according to the latest census published on Tuesday. But 76,535 Sikhs in the UK chose to identify their ethnicity as Sikh in the latest census by choosing to put Sikh in the self-write option of the “other ethnicity” part of the ethnicity question, rejecting the Asian/Asian British category, which has a sub-category of Indian. A further 22,814 Sikhs wrote in their ethnic group as “Sikh” within the high-level Asian, Asian British “category, rejecting the sub-categories of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or other Asian”. Some also wrote Tamil, Kashmiri, Anglo-Indian and Punjabi in either the “Other ethnic” or “Asian British” sub-category write-in boxes, rejecting the choices on offer.

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