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Hindus And Sikhs Struggle In Afghanistan


Mehtab Singh
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Dwindling community struggles to maintain identity.

By Mina Habib, Abdal

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We arent treated as human beings, Sikh businessman Amrit Singh said as he sat in his small grocery shop in the Kabul neighbourhood of Shor Bazaar. When we are alive, we are disrespected, insulted and beaten. And when we take our dead to the crematorium, which is our personal property, they wont let us burn the bodies, saying it stinks.

Do we have any rights in this country or not? the 45-year-old asked.

Hindus and Sikhs form a miniscule community in todays Afghanistan. Historically playing an important role as traders and entrepreneurs, they lived in Afghanistan in relative harmony for hundreds of years, mostly in the capital Kabul and in the southeastern Khost province.

According to Avtar Singh, chairman of the national council of Hindus and Sikhs, the community now numbers only 395 families. Before the collapse of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992, he said, there were around 200,000 people from the two communities.

During the civil war that followed, many sought refuge in other countries, India in particular. For those who remained, things got worse under the Taleban government of 1996-2001. Their freedom to practice their religion was restricted, and cremation was banned altogether.

Although that ban is no longer in place, Avtar Singh said funeral rites remained a major issue, noting public opposition to the use of the 120-year-old crematorium in Qalacha, southeast of Kabul.

When we take our dead bodies to the crematorium, we take the police with us. Even so, local people throw stones at us. They disrespect our dead, he said, adding that despite appeals to the Afghan parliament, the Independent Human Rights Commission, the United Nations mission and the United States embassy, his community had received little help.

Daud Amin, deputy police chief in Kabul city, said that his forces were doing their best to protect the minority.

We have always worked with them, he said. We have accompanied them and we havent allowed anyone to insult them. Members of the public threw stones at them only once, and we stopped it. We have helped them whenever theyve asked us for help.

Residents of Qalacha insisted they had no problems with Hindus and Sikhs, only with the cremations.

Gholam Habib Fawad, deputy chairman of the community council in Qalacha, said the crematorium used to be located far from residential areas, but that had changed as more homes were built in its vicinity.

When they burn bodies there, the smell goes into the houses, he said. Many people react and fall sick. The children are scared. Some families need to leave their houses for several days and go and live with relatives.

Avtar Singh denied that the cremations had any impact on the environment.

Representatives from the municipality and the police have been present when we burned the bodies, and even they said they didnt smell anything, he said.

Anarkali Kaur Honaryar, a Sikh member of the upper house of parliament, says she has raised the cremation issue at the highest levels.

I have pursued [the Qalacha] issue with government officials myself, said Honaryar, who has been the Senates only non-Muslim member since 2010. They have been cooperative. I believe that certain political elements and foreign meddling are creating problems for the Hindus and Sikhs, since we didnt use to have problems with our Muslim brothers.

Many Hindus and Sikhs, however, say they face threats, insults and even physical violence from their neighbours.

Our women cant go out, said Bajan Singh, who has a grocery shop in Kabul. When our children go to school, they are insulted by their classmates for being Hindu. A number of our Hindu brothers have been beaten and their money stolen. All of our rights have been trampled on. I wish [the government] would move us to some other country.

Honaryar acknowledged that Sikhs and Hindus faced some problems, which she attributed to ignorance in the wider community. She said she had asked the media and the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs to launch a public education campaign.

In my opinion, the low level of public literacy, immigration [of returning Afghan refugees], and lack of information about the Hindu minority are the causes of this problem, she said. But not everyone is like that. Its just some ignorant people who do these things. I have contacted the police in such cases and they have been wholly cooperative and have punished the individuals involved.

Honaryar said she was behind an initiative to build a purpose-built settlement in eastern Kabul complete with schools, a crematorium and other facilities for the Sikhs and Hindus in the city. But so far, the response had not been enthusiastic.

Now that weve launched the town, no one is prepared to go there, she said. The municipality calls me every day and says construction work needs to get started there.

Hindus and Sikhs living in Kabul said moving to new homes would not solve their problems, and they would face more security threats if they were outside the capital.

We arent safe in the heart of Kabul even with all its police and laws, resident Manpal Singh said. How are we going to be able to live in a desert 20 kilometres outside from the city? What will the people in [other] villages do to us? Was there nowhere else in Kabul, so that they had to send us to deserts and mountains?

Yet some people still have fond memories of a time when the Muslim and Hindu communities lived peacefully together.

We shared our happiness and grief, said Badshah, a Muslim shopkeeper in the town of Khost. When we go to India now, we stay in their homes. They are proud Afghans. They are hospitable. They worked alongside us to address problems. I miss them.

Samteral, a Hindu from Khost currently living in Kabul, said, We were so friendly with our Muslim brothers that we never even thought about who we were or who they were. We were all the same, Afghans.

He said he was still in touch with Afghan Hindus now living in India.

They all mourn for their homes and villages. I wish we had security. so we could all live together again, he added.

Mina Habib is an IWPR contributor in Kabul. Abdali is an IWPR-trained reporter in Khost province.

Source: IWPR

Link:http://iwpr.net/report-news/tough-times-afghan-hindus-and-sikhs

http://groundreport.com/hindus-and-sikhs-struggle-in-afghanistan/

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I watched that 'Mission Afghanistan' documentary on you tube not long ago. In it, they filmed one of Kabul's largest and most famous Gurdwaras. The granthi there said during the civil war the northern alliance under massoud used the Gurdwara as an arsenal and garrison and banned Sikhs from entering. He said the Gurdwara was full of dead bodies as the northern alliance used it as a fort...and they refused to let the Sikhs remove the dead bodies. He said it was when the Taliban cam to power that things improved for the Sikhs. He said the Taliban came, removed the dead bodies, cleaned up the Gurdwara for the Sikhs and handed it back to the Sikhs. His own words.

Now....whilst the taliban is mostly made up of ethnic pashtoons, the northern alliance is mostly made up of ethnic Hazaras and Tajiks...i.e mongol looking afghans. It is those same people that make up the majority of Kabul today and it is those same people that are making life difficult for Sikhs again today. They have always been bitterly opposed to the pro 'Islamic' policies of the taliban. I don't then see how it can be said by my veers here that "Nothing but islam is to blame here", when clearly it is the group of people opposed to radical islam who are causing the Sikhs the most problems ?

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I watched that 'Mission Afghanistan' documentary on you tube not long ago. In it, they filmed one of Kabul's largest and most famous Gurdwaras. The granthi there said during the civil war the northern alliance under massoud used the Gurdwara as an arsenal and garrison and banned Sikhs from entering. He said the Gurdwara was full of dead bodies as the northern alliance used it as a fort...and they refused to let the Sikhs remove the dead bodies. He said it was when the Taliban cam to power that things improved for the Sikhs. He said the Taliban came, removed the dead bodies, cleaned up the Gurdwara for the Sikhs and handed it back to the Sikhs. His own words.

Now....whilst the taliban is mostly made up of ethnic pashtoons, the northern alliance is mostly made up of ethnic Hazaras and Tajiks...i.e mongol looking afghans. It is those same people that make up the majority of Kabul today and it is those same people that are making life difficult for Sikhs again today. They have always been bitterly opposed to the pro 'Islamic' policies of the taliban. I don't then see how it can be said by my veers here that "Nothing but islam is to blame here", when clearly it is the group of people opposed to radical islam who are causing the Sikhs the most problems ?

I heard the same thing from an Afghan Sikh. He told me that Norther Alliance warlords are the worst while the Afghan Taliban did not bother Sikhs because the Taliban lived with some rules and regulations while the northern alliance fighters were just looters. But western writers write a different story.

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I don't then see how it can be said by my veers here that "Nothing but islam is to blame here", when clearly it is the group of people opposed to radical islam who are causing the Sikhs the most problems ?

The reason why I say islam is to blame there is because take islam out of the equation and you wont get much fighting in afghanistan. Virtually every nation on earth that has islamic ideology particularly the political aspect infested within it is in turmoil. Why? Because its a totalterian fundamentalist backward religion that makes its believers stick their head back in the 7th century and not progress. When they go into jihad mode they dont care any rules of war or excesses against non-muslims or muslims alike.

The taliban is not 1 single entity you have good taliban and bad taliban just like any other armed religious or political group you have those who have high standards and those who are the lowest of low who would kill their own mothers if they got in the way of their agenda. So when afghan sikhs says the taliban did good things for us and other afghan Sikhs say they murdered us and raped our women and destroyed our homes then you have those afghan Sikhs saying ahmed shah masood's forces were great for them in liberating their homes and others who may say the opposite. To get a more balanced picture we have to see the accounts of people who have suffered under all armed forces that have plunged afghanistan into a war torn hell hole for past few decades.

Bottom line is Islam, jihadi's are the root cause of all of the strife Afghanistan faces and all other muslim nations. The muslims can not even live in peace with each other (shia vs sunni) how they going to live in peace with non-muslims?

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