Afghan Sikh community dwindles

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By SSNews, newsday
Jul 9, 2006, 20:07

Sado Singh and his family camp out in the desolate ruin of a huge Sikh temple, one of about 10 in Kabul that once hummed with prayer, schooling and festivals. Singh hopes the bulk of Afghan Sikhs, now exiled as refugees in India or the West, may return some day, but “the conditions are very difficult and we don’t know whether they will get better,” he said.

Historic ties

Sikhs have lived in Afghanistan for centuries, with the majority originally migrating westwards to the central Asian country from India and what is now Pakistan.

Under the Taliban, Sikh men were forced to wear yellow turbans and yellow salwar kameez [long tunic-like shirt and baggy trousers] while women were made to wear burqas.

Sikh women who did not adhere to this stringent dress code were as susceptible to street beatings by Taliban police as other Afghan women.

Religious minorities dwindle

Thirty years of war, plus intolerance fueled by Islamic militant groups, has nearly eliminated Afghanistan’s traditional religious minorities. As the United States and its allies try to build a modern, tolerant state to replace that of the Taliban, the few non-Muslim Afghans who remain voice only faint hopes of restoring their communities.

News isn’t encouraging

At Shor Bazaar, once a bustling Sikh community, five Sikh families camp, as impoverished caretakers of their dilapidated temple. The Khalsa Gurdwara is a looming, shattered, concrete shell. Bright, hot sunlight pours through holes blasted by mortars in the roof, slanting into empty, dusty halls where thousands of Sikhs once celebrated religious festivals.

The men eke out a little cash as street merchants. And they labor to slowly clear a few rooms in the temple and make them habitable. They’ve paid about $2,300 in fees and bribes to get city officials to connect water pipes and electrical lines to the temple, said Satwan Singh, 33. But “we’ve been waiting for months and we’ve gotten nothing,” he said.

“Muslims taunt our boys as ‘potato-heads,'” making fun of the Sikhs’ head-coverings, Singh said, “and their children throw stones at the Gurdwara.” And Singh, like the other Sikhs camped in the temples of Shor Bazaar, is a refugee from the eastern town of Khost, where local Muslims seized properties of Sikh and Hindu traders two years ago.

Lack of services

But even more than such racism, Singh and others said, it’s the continued collapse of government and its services that threatens their community.

Singh worked as a street vendor until city officials ordered him to move his wooden stall. But just like water and electricity, “you can’t get a new permit [for street vending] without paying a big bribe,” he said. Karzai’s government acknowledges that corruption is one of its biggest problems.

Of 200,000 Sikhs and Hindus who lived in Kabul in the 1980s, “we now have 360 families, fewer than 1,000 people, left,” said Avtar Singh, leader of the city’s Sikh community.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says 88% of India’s 9700 Afghan refugees are Sikhs and Hindu.

Afghanistan’s Sikhs in exile “must have some real hope of making a good life” before they will return, said Satwan Singh.

“How can I hope?” he asked. “I have three kids and I can’t send them to any school. I am ready to move from here to any place where I can take care of my family.”