DAKKHANI SIKHS or Sikhs of the Deccan, a distinctive ethnic community scattered in parts of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, are the descendants of Punjabi Sikhs who went to the South during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries and permanently settled in what was then the princely state of Hyderabad. The first Punjabi Sikhs to travel to the South comprised the 300strong contingent which arrived at Nanded in 1708 in the train of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708).
