Harpreet Kaur and her 31 rings, an Afghan Sikh refugee’s tale

Source: The Tribune

Harkiran Kaur Sodhi

HARPREET Kaur was a young girl in Delhi when she married her love and moved to Kabul. “At first, I couldn’t understand where I had come. I used to cry in my room,” she recalls. Slowly, the community’s irresistible warmth touched her. “Phir mera bahut dil lag gaya and I didn’t want to leave.” Her parents had left Afghanistan for Delhi after Baisakhi in 1947. She grew up as a daughter of refugees in Delhi but little did she know she was going to become one herself, when she had to move back from Kabul after her husband’s death in a blast in Afghanistan. Harpreet Kaur is one of the rare Delhi transplants into Kabul, who eventually returned to Delhi, now a city of strangers for her.

Harpreet has two children, both born in Afghanistan. Her husband, Rawail Singh, was a community leader and trader. “He taught me to read and write. I am literate because of him,” she says. “Every day we made lunch at home, and went out for dinner,” she recalls. Her kids went to good schools and speak fluent Punjabi. She remembers the little things he did. “Every evening their father would come home from work and teach them Punjabi,” she says. “Every year on our anniversary and my birthday, he gifted me a ring,” Harpreet remembers, “I had 31 rings in all. I felt like a queen.”

When a six-year-old Muslim girl landed at her doorstep, Harpreet took her in. She became her third child, and grew up with her own children. “Whenever my kids got a dress made, she would get one too”. To Harpreet, it didn’t matter what faith she belonged to.

Never in their wildest dreams had the family imagined that their life would change forever. In 2018, her husband received an invitation to join a caravan of Sikh leaders of Afghanistan to meet the President, Ashraf Ghani, in Jalalabad. “I had a feeling that something bad was about to happen,” Harpreet says. But her husband didn’t think twice, “Mein seva karan ja rehan, meinu kuch nahin hunda,” he said, and left. That was the last time Harpreet saw her husband. In a country where explosions and bombings are so frequent, life is uncertain. When Rawail Singh, along with 12 other Sikh leaders, went to meet President Ghani, their van was asked to wait at the gate of the President’s complex. Before they knew it, a suicide bomber appeared and the leaders were no more. Ghani was unharmed. He continued with his meetings.

The tragic incident changed the lives of the families related to these 17 leaders. Harpreet’s life was thrust into turmoil. Living in areas of conflict does not make the pain of loss any less. Trauma translates into a blur sometimes, and before she knew it, Harpreet had landed in Delhi. “Afghanistan wasn’t safe,” she says. She left her house in care of the Muslim girl she had raised, now 20 years of age. She left Afghanistan six months after the blast, and took next to nothing with her. But despite having arrived in Delhi more than two years back, Harpreet still considers Afghanistan her home.

Harpreet now lives in the Tilak Vihar neighbourhood of Delhi, along with many other Afghan Sikh refugee families. The community continues to struggle. While stories of Partition are romanticised from afar, there is nothing beautiful about this modern-day Sikh refugee crisis. As they all wait to emigrate, the question remains — how are they doing in Delhi?

When the pandemic struck

Things took a turn for the worse for the community when Covid-19 struck. “My son assisted at a local shop for a meagre pay but during the lockdown, the shops were closed. One day I found him crying like the way he did when his dad died,” says Harpreet. When she asked him the reason, he said, “I want to go back to Afghanistan. I cannot find work; I can’t sit here and be useless all day. If we’re going to die, we’re going to die, why not just go back home?”

Harpreet had taken on seamstress tasks but low demand caused that to shut down too. “We live in a rented house. There are bills to pay: electricity, water and phone,” says a teary-eyed Harpreet. She says, no organisation was providing any support, and even if there was any such support available, she doesn’t know how to go about seeking it. “No one asks about us. It’s as if we don’t matter,” she adds, “no one cares to know how we put food on the table — saada koi puchan wala nahin hai”. She goes on, “We moved to Delhi for a better life, but sometimes I wonder if Afghanistan was better.”

Similar has been the fate of most Afghan refugee families. Losses trickled down to lay-offs and many members of the community went without even the paltry assured income. “The situation in Afghanistan has continued to worsen. Thinking of going back means accepting death. Yet, this thought continues to cross our minds — not just because it is home, but because of what Delhi has given us,” says Harpreet.

Earlier this year, 25 Sikhs were killed when a militant attacked a gurdwara in Kabul in the midst of an ardas. Efforts have been on to bring back remaining members of the Afghan Sikh community to Delhi for reasons of safety. But is that enough, asks another Afghan Sikh refugee Giani Gurnaam Singh, who has moved from Jalalabad to Delhi. According to him, evacuating Afghan Sikhs has a laudable effort but more needs to be done.

“We must not assume that landing in Delhi is the solution – it is only a new beginning”, he says. International efforts to resettle the community appear limited to newly arrived refugees.They must be provided long-term foreign resettlement and short-term empowerment efforts. All the individuals interviewed for the Afghan Sikh Voices project view Delhi as only a temporary relocation, as they hope to leave for the West soon.

Harpreet’s story is a testament that time is not always healing, and humanity is not always forgiving. It has been two years since Harpreet came here but her situation continues to worsen. Now, as a 40-year-old, with two teenage children, she has no NGO assistance to register with the UNHCR or resettle in a different country. Foreign philanthropy provided short-term resettlement assistance to other families.

Harpreet’s three-year visa will expire next year and she has no clue as to what comes next. Nothing makes sense to her. When asked how she pays the bills, she says, “I sold the 31 rings my husband gave me.”

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Facing IS, last embattled Sikhs, Hindus leave Afghanistan

Source: Concord Monitor, Star Tribune

By TAMEEM AKHGAR Associated Press Published: 9/27/2020

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s dwindling community of Sikhs and Hindus is shrinking to its lowest levels. With growing threats from the local Islamic State affiliate, many are choosing to leave the country of their birth to escape the insecurity and a once-thriving community of as many as 250,000 members now counts fewer than 700.

The community’s numbers have been declining for years because of deep-rooted discrimination in the majority Muslim country. But, without what they say is adequate protection from the government, the attacks by the Islamic State group may complete the exodus.

“We are no longer able to stay here,” said a member of the tiny community, who asked to be identified only by his last name, Hamdard, out of fear he may be targeted for speaking out. Hamdard said seven relatives of his, including his sister, nephews, and son-in-law were killed by Islamic State gunmen in an attack on the community’s temple in March, which killed 25 Sikhs.

Hamdard said that fleeing his homeland is as difficult as leaving a mother behind. Still, he joined a group of Sikhs and Hindus who left Afghanistan last month for India, from where they will eventually move on to a third country.

Although Sikhism and Hinduism are two distinct religions with their own holy books and temples, in Afghanistan the communities are interwoven, having been driven into a kinship by their tiny size, and they both gather under one roof or a single temple to worship, each following their own faith.

The community has suffered widespread discrimination in the conservative Muslim country.

Under Taliban rule in the late 1990s, Sikhs and Hindus were asked to identify themselves by wearing yellow armbands, but after a global outcry, the rule was not enforced. Also driving the exodus is the inability to reclaim Sikh homes, businesses and houses of worship that were illegally seized years ago.

Aside from the March attack by IS gunmen, a 2018 Islamic State suicide attack in the city of Jalalabad killed 19 people, most of them Sikhs, including a longtime leader who had nominated himself for the Afghan parliament.

“Suffering big fatalities for a small community is not tolerable,” said Charan Singh Khalsa, a leader of the Sikh community living abroad, who declined to say where he was living out of fear for his safety. 

He left Afghanistan after his brother was kidnapped and killed in an attack by gunmen in Kabul two years ago. He said the last three years have been the worst period for all Afghans, but especially so for Sikhs and Hindus.

Community leaders have slammed recent governments for failing to step up security in the face of the IS threat.

Afghanistan’s government in 2010 decided to dedicate a chair in the national assembly to religious minorities, and there have since been two Sikh representatives.

But Khalsa called these posts “symbolic”. He criticized the government for taking too long to grant political representation powers to the community and for failing to “provide security to our places of worship.” 

A senior Sikh community leader told The Associated Press that the group is in negotiations with the government over its security needs and the repairing of the temple after it was destroyed in March’s attack. The community leader spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations with the media.

At a press conference last month, President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, said that members of the Afghan Sikh and Hindu community will return once peace is restored. The president’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the AP, but other Afghan officials have pledged to assist the community.

“We will use all our facilities to provide security to the people,” Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said, without elaborating. “We are committed and responsible for their (Sikhs and Hindus) mental and personal security.” 

It is not clear what kind of security measures are being discussed, nor when they might be seen on the ground.

Until then, the community’s flight is accelerating, with large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus continuing a recent trend of seeking asylum in India, which has a Hindu majority and a large Sikh population.

In August, a group of 176 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus went to India on special visas. They were the second batch since March, with the first 11 members arriving in India in July.

Khalsa said that a group of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus in Canada and European countries has volunteered to sponsor the exodus of those remaining in Kabul who cannot afford air tickets and temporary accommodation in a transit country.

Several Canadian legislators have asked the country’s immigration ministry for a special program for Afghan Sikh and Hindu refugees, requesting that they be brought to safety in Canada amid the increasing security threat.

For Afghan Sikhs, the thought of being uprooted is painful, despite the circumstances.

“It’s hard to leave our birthplace but we have no other option,” said Hamdard. “Afghanistan does not want us anymore.”

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Mukish Pran

Mukish Pran talks about his singing and memories of his father Prannath — a popular Afghan Hindu singer

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A tale of love, sacrifice and devotion: How the last Hindu of Ghazni stayed back in Afghanistan to take care of his Temple, even after his family came to India

Source: pIndia

Not too long ago, India provided refuge to twenty-one Hindu and Sikh families from Ghazni in Afghanistan. The constant threat to their lives and the hardships they have to endure is not something that is secret. Islamic terrorism and extremism has made the lives of ethnic and religious minorities in the war torn country a living hell.

While the Hindu and Sikh families came over to India, one man remained. He had to stay behind in order to take care of the Hindu Temple that still exists. His name is Raja Ram. He may have never set his feet in India but his name bears the unmistakable mark of the intimate relationship he shares with out country.

Raja Ram told Radio Free Afghanistan, “We all love our homeland, but they had to flee after the attacks.” “To everyone, their homeland is Kashmir,” he added. He further said, “Members of our community have left with broken hearts because of their worsening circumstances here.” His wife and four children have come to India, in the hope of a better future, but he chose to remain to take care of the Temple. He is paid nearly $100 by the Afghan government a month to take care of it.

The last Hindu of Ghazni still hopes that there will come a day when his wife and children will be able to return to the place they call home and live in peace. But perhaps, he knows in his heart that these are mere fantasies and it does not do well for people to dwell too much in them. “I hope that everyone will return to Afghanistan once there is peace here. The Hindus and Sikhs are sons of this soil — they are Afghans, too,” he said.

Hindus and Sikhs were once an 80,000 strong minority in Afghanistan but they are now vanishing. Most of them have come over to India while some, with the means for it, chose to leave for the West. In India, the beleaguered minorities have found a home and an opportunity to build a future for their children.

While they still miss their homeland, sometimes, as is human nature, they are grateful for the opportunity India has provided them with. And it is in their hopes that India finds the true meaning for its existence. It is the sacred duty of our country to provide shelter to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists whose lives are in jeopardy in our neighbouring Islamic states.

The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, was the first steptowards recognising this sacred duty that India bears towards these unfortunate victims of Islamic extremism. It was opposed tooth and nail by many but the misery that such refugees have to endure illustrates perfectly the necessity of it. In neighbouring Pakistan, we are daily witness to the savagery that the Hindu and Sikh minorities are subjected to.

The story of the last Hindu of Ghazni, Raja Ram, also demonstrates the sacrifices that Hindus have made through the ages to ensure the continued worship of our Gods and Goddesses. All alone in a hostile environment, with his children and wife away in a distant land, he chose to remain to ensure that a candle is still lit in the Temple that has been placed in his care. It is through these monumental sacrifices that our civilisation is sustained and the flag of our ancestors continues to fly high.

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Request by Afghan Sikhs to settle in India rises after gurdwara attack in March

Source: Hindustan Times

A total of 357 members of Afghanistan’s Sikh minority have arrived in India this year to escape persecution and targeted attacks by “terrorists and their sponsors”, the ministry of external affairs said on Thursday.

Requests from Afghan Sikhs to be granted permission to settle in India had increased since a terror attack on a Sikh place of worship in the Afghan capital earlier this year, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava told a virtual weekly news briefing. 

Nearly 30 people, most of them Sikhs, were killed in the attack in Kabul in March. The attack was blamed on the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which have close ties with the Pakistani military establishment. 

“We have been receiving requests from Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan to grant them permission to settle down in India,” Srivastava said. 

“These requests have specifically gone up after the attack in the gurdwara in Kabul in March,” he said, without giving details regarding the number of requests received by New Delhi.

“We see a targeted persecution of the minority community members by terrorists and their sponsors, and this is a matter of serious concern,” Srivastava said. 

“To ensure their safety and well-being, the Indian mission in Kabul has been actively in contact with them and they are facilitated [for] their smooth arrival from Afghanistan despite the Covid-19 related restrictions,” he added. 

“So far, 357 members of the minority community have arrived from Afghanistan to India since the lockdown and the Indian Sikh community is assisting in making their stay comfortable in India,” he said.

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Ghazni Residents Mourn The Loss Of Hindu, Sikh Neighbors

Source: Gandhara

GHAZNI, Afghanistan — As the last Hindu resident of Ghazni, Raja Ram is making a stand. Despite fears for his safety following the recent departure of the city’s last 21 Hindu and Sikh families to India, he insists on staying in his homeland.

The Hindus and Sikhs fled decades of uncertainty, attacks, and business losses in the capital of a province also called Ghazni, which once boasted a vibrant trading community of several hundred Hindu and Sikh families that sold spices, herbal medicines, and textiles in the city and beyond. The city of 270,000 is now mourning the loss of its Hindu and Sikh neighbors.

“We all love our homeland, but they had to flee after the attacks,” Ram told Radio Free Afghanistan, referring to a major attack on a Sikh temple this spring. The Islamic State (IS) militants claimed the March 25 attack, which killed 25 people in the capital, Kabul. The attack prompted the 250 families of Afghanistan’s tiny Hindu and Sikh community to begin the journey to India on special visas.

“To everyone, their homeland is Kashmir,” Ram said, quoting a Pashto proverb to illustrate that Afghanistan’s Hindu and Sikh minorities love their country as much as the fabled valleys of the disputed Himalayan region. “Members of our community have left with broken hearts because of their worsening circumstances here.” While members of two distinct faiths, Afghanistan’s tiny Hindus and Sikhs are considered one community.

While Afghanistan’s once 80,000-strong Hindu and Sikh community is on the verge of vanishing from the country, their Muslim neighbors and friends are saddened by their departure and long for the day when they can return.

Abdul Majeed, a shopkeeper, remembers growing up with Hindu and Sikh friends in Ghazni. “We are really sad the attacks and insecurity ultimately forced them to leave,” he said. “I wish they could have stayed here and enjoyed living a normal life alongside us.”

Ram, whose wife and four children have moved to India, is staying behind to look after a Hindu temple, a task for which the Afghan government pays him nearly $100 a month. He says his community has faced no persecution from Ghazni’s ethnic Pashtun, Tajik, or Hazara residents but the fear of being targeted in attacks by Islamist militants or kidnapped by criminals made them leave.

“Our forefathers have lived in harmony with local communities across Afghanistan,” he said.

Last month, Sardar Gurbachan Singh Ghazniwal left Afghanistan. Like Ram, he lived in Ghazni but lost his business and property in the chaotic years of civil war in the 1990s. He resisted leaving Afghanistan and continued living at the Kabul temple, but after losing nine relatives in the March 25 attack Ghazniwal joined a group of exiled Afghan Hindus and Sikhs in India.

He tells Radio Free Afghanistan he began to feel alienated in his homeland. “Whenever I rode in a bus or a taxi, my [Afghan] Muslim brothers asked me, ‘Where do you come from in India Sardar?’,” Ghazniwal said. “Even when I speak fluent Pashto and Dari, I am not considered an equal [citizen],” he added, referring to Afghanistan’s two major languages.

In Ghazni, residents lament that their Hindu and Sikh neighbors have left. “Sikhs are one of Afghanistan’s most peaceful communities,” said Haji Basir, a textile merchant in Ghazni’s Bazazi neighborhood. He says he often misses his neighbor, Otar Singh, who owned a shop next to his. “I am very sad that he has left. I am sad for all our compatriots Sikhs and Hindus who have left,” he told Radio Free Afghanistan.

Rahima, a housewife in Ghazni, misses her Hindu friend Sapna. “We were very happy and often visited each other’s houses,” she told Radio Free Afghanistan. “I often miss Sapna and am very sad that she left.”

Matiullah Kamalpuri, a local aid worker, says a large Hindu and Sikh community once thrived in the capital and provinces such as Ghazni, Helmand, Nangarhar, Khost, and Paktia. “They were a part of our national fabric,” he noted. “They were a patriotic people and were committed to serving our country and their communities,” he added. “We are saddened over their departure; it is a major loss.”

Wahidullah Jumazada, spokesman for the provincial governor, says the authorities are also dismayed over the departure of Ghazni’s Hindus and Sikhs. “They were a prominent fixture in our celebrations, but we now have no one to invite to our gatherings,” he said.

But Narender Singh Khalsa, Afghanistan’s lone Sikh lawmaker, wants the authorities to act to provide security so that they can have confidence in their future. “Four months after the attack on our temple, the government has done nothing to reconstruct it, so we do not see anything that can boost our confidence [that we are protected here],” he told Radio Free Afghanistan last month.

Back in Ghazni, Ram hopes to reunite with his wife and their two sons and two daughters in a peaceful Afghanistan where Hindus and Sikhs can live as equal citizens. “I hope that everyone will return to Afghanistan once there is peace here,” he said. “The Hindus and Sikhs are sons of this soil — they are Afghans, too.”

Abubakar Siddique wrote this story based on Habibur Rahman Taseer’s reporting from Afghanistan.

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Vet­eran Afghan Sikh leader Kha­jin­der Singh passes away in Delhi

Source: The World Sikh News

For the last thirty years, Kha­jin­der Singh had made his vo­ca­tion to sup­port the Afghan Sikh repa­tri­ates com­ing from Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan flee­ing the per­ilous sit­u­a­tion in the war-torn coun­try.  He passed away last evening fol­low­ing a mas­sive heart at­tack. He came to Delhi in 1990 it­self when the trou­bles started in Afghanistan and has since then has been the ‘Man Fri­day’ to many an Afghan Sikh in­di­vid­ual and fam­ily. He not only pro­vided sup­port in In­dia but en­abled not hun­dreds but thou­sands to go to the West, de­spite all odds. It is a trib­ute to his hard work that all Afghan Sikhs who are now vis­i­ble in the UK, USA, Eu­rope, Canada and other parts of the world, have had some as­so­ci­a­tion with him and his Afghan Sikh and Hindu Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion through which he main­tained live links with the In­dian gov­ern­ment and the UN­HCR of­fices in Delhi.

WHEN I SPOKE TO HIM JUST A FEW DAYS BACK, PRIOR TO THE AR­RIVAL OF THE SEC­OND BATCH OF AFGHAN SIKHS TO NEW DELHI,  KHA­JIN­DER SINGH KHU­RANA told me that in view of the stren­u­ous cir­cum­stances in which the Sikhs are com­ing from Afghanistan, he had post­poned his trip to Lon­don to meet his fam­ily there.  He spoke to me for more than an hour and spelt out all the minute de­tails of the arrange­ments that he and his team were mak­ing for the ar­rival of the Kabul San­gat.

He was wor­ried about the fact that Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions en­gaged in the wel­fare of the Afghan Sikhs should not work at log­ger­heads with each other and to that end, he was re­cep­tive to sug­ges­tions. He had drafted an open let­ter for Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions call­ing a spade a spade and was nice enough to dis­close the con­tents of the same, even though it was my sec­ond tele­phonic in­ter­ac­tion with me.

In view of the volatile sit­u­a­tion and with the last hun­dreds of Afghan Sikhs wait­ing in the wings for de­par­ture to In­dia, I re­quested him to ei­ther re­word the let­ter or drop it al­to­gether. He agreed and as much as I know he did not make an is­sue of any­thing.

Work­ing for three decades with peo­ple who have un­der­gone a trauma of one kind or an­other can be a trau­matic ex­pe­ri­ence it­self.  It is not pos­si­ble to ap­pease every­one, yet Kha­jin­der Singh took every­thing in his stride.

Khajinder Singh presenting his Punjabi book on History of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus to Afghan King Zakir Shah

Last year in De­cem­ber 2019, he presided over a meet­ing of well-wish­ers of Afghan Sikhs in Delhi, where there were in­vi­tees from Afghanistan, the USA and many from In­dia and Delhi. Harsaran Singh of the Global Sikh Coun­cil, who at­tended the meet told WSN on the phone about his fond mem­o­ries of Kha­jin­der Singh’s per­son­al­ity. He said, “He was a very gen­tle and sober-minded per­son, full of hu­mil­ity. Ris­ing from a hum­ble back­ground he be­came a well-known busi­ness per­son in the Delhi Sikh com­mu­nity.”

“While he is mostly known for his con­cern about the well-be­ing and safety of Sikhs left be­hind in his home­land Afghanistan, few peo­ple know that he was also con­cerned about fu­ture of Sikhs in other con­flict zones like Kash­mir and the fu­ture of Sikh youth there, which he dis­cussed dur­ing the meet­ing.”

“He was a very gen­tle and sober-minded per­son, full of hu­mil­ity. Ris­ing from a hum­ble back­ground he be­came a well-known busi­ness per­son in the Delhi Sikh com­mu­nity.” ~HARSARAN SINGH, GLOBAL SIKH COUN­CIL

The Bhai Ghanaiya Seva Dal from Kash­mir has ex­pressed deep con­do­lences at the demise of Kha­jin­der Singh.

Doc­u­men­tary Film­maker Afghan Sikh, now in the UK -Prit­pal Singh in a Face­book post has shared the pic­ture of Kha­jin­der Singh pre­sent­ing his book on the Afghan Sikhs and Hin­dus in the Pun­jabi lan­guage to the last King of Afghanistan -Za­hir Shah. Prit­pal Singh also tells us that, “Kha­jin­der Singh was closely re­lated to for­mer Afghan Sikh MPs -Jai Singh Fani and Gajin­der Singh.”

US-based film-maker Man­meet Singh, who has been part of the SaveAghan­Sikhs cam­paign, in his re­ac­tion on so­cial me­dia said, “Very sad news. It is heart­break­ing.”

“Soon af­ter the March 25 at­tack on Sikhs in Kabul, I met Kha­jin­der Singh at a so­cial func­tion in Delhi. We shared con­cerns and took up the mat­ter with var­i­ous Sikh bod­ies. When I spoke to him last, he seemed over­whelmed with the prob­lems of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Afghan Sikhs who had re­cently ar­rived,” said Chandi­garh-based Gur­preet Singh, Pres­i­dent of The In­sti­tute of Sikh Stud­ies.

Due to the COVID19 re­stric­tions, I did not get an op­por­tu­nity to meet the per­sona of a gi­ant who is no more, but I hope and pray that his legacy lives on. Our deep­est em­pa­thy to his fam­ily, friends and as­so­ci­ates.

The World Sikh News Team hopes and prays that some­body from amongst those who have come from Afghanistan will carry on the good work that still re­mains un­fin­ished as many Afghan Sikh fam­i­lies in Delhi are still star­ring at an un­cer­tain fu­ture.

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BEACON OF HOPE FOR AFGHANI SIKH & HINDU FAMILIES SETTLING IN INDIA PASSES AWAY AFTER CARDIAC ARREST

Source: Sikh24.com

S. Khajinder Singh Khurana (red turban) can been seen presenting his book – Kabul di Sangat- to the last King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah. Picture courtesy: The Dutch Sikh.

NEW DELHI, India—S. Khajinder Singh Khurana, a prominent activist who worked tirelessly to relocate Afghani Sikh and Hindu families out of Afghanistan passed away yesterday due to cardiac arrest. Khajinder Singh was a very respectful member of the Sikh community and held in great regard by both Sikh and Hindu Afghani communities.

He recently played a very prominent role in arranging for the relocation of the Afghani Sikh and Hindu families, without taking any credit for his hard and tireless work. He was prominent in arranging for the entire relocation process, with the help of a handful of foreign-based Sikhs well-known to him.

Although today, the SGPC, DSGPC, and even BJP are taking credit for settling Afghani families in India, those who have already migrated to India in the past three months give credit to the hard work of Khajinder Singh.

After the attack on the Kabul Gurdwara Sahib in March earlier this year, S. Khajinder Singh was swift to get in touch with the families in Afghanistan. He worked with a handful of his colleagues to chalk out the entire strategy. At the same time, the World Sikh Organization and the Manmeet Singh Bhullar Foundation were trying to sponsor the Afghani Sikh and Hindu families to migrate to Canada, however, due to the process being slow, and considering the dire circumstances that were facing these families, Khajinder Singh worked tirelessly day and night to settle these families in India.

S. Khajinder Singh authored a Punjabi book on the history of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus.

Khajinder Singh was closely related to S. Jai Singh Fani and Gajinder Singh, the former Afghan Sikh MPs. He fled the Afghan civil war to India in the early 1990s. In India, he set up the Afghan Hindu and Sikh Welfare Society dealing visa and other issues faced by the first wave of Afghan refugees in India.

Speaking with Sikh24 earlier in June this year, S. Khajinder Singh said he appreciated efforts by the DSGMC in providing accommodations to the Afghani refugees but he said a lot more needs to be done to help these families. He called upon the SGPC and DSGMC to be honest if they wanted to help these families. His concern was that the SGPC had expressed interest in supporting these families financially, but hey had not made any communication with Afghani Sikh leaders.

Before his passing away, S. Khajinder Singh was working on permanently settling these families in rental houses after their quarantine period was over. A few families had already been settled in rental houses in and around New Delhi. All of this was possible with the hard work of S. Khajinder Singh and his team of volunteers as the DSGMC and SGPC failed to provide a long term strategy for the settlement of these families.

At the time when Sikh24 last spoke with S. Khajinder Singh, around 200 Afghan Sikh families were living in the serais (rest houses) of prominent Sikh shrines in India’s national capital New Delhi. 138 persons had been accommodated in 31 rooms of Gurdwara Motibagh’s rest house which means that averagely 4-5 Afghan Sikhs were forced to live in a single room meant for two adults only. He said this was the best that could be done considering there was no financial support from any organization for this project. He said even this would not have been possible without the support of the DSGMC, especially Majinder Singh Sira.

“Although, the Indian government has saved our lives by evacuating us from Afghanistan but now we have a big challenge in front of us to bring our lives back on track. We have left our properties and businesses in Afghanistan and here we are standing as penniless so the Indian government must take into consideration the needs of our lives,” an evacuated Afghan Sikh told Sikh24 after settling down in India.

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200 Sikh Families Who Arrived From Afghanistan Have Been Put Up In Gurudwaras Across Delhi

Source: India Times

Close to 200 Sikh families who have arrived from Afghanistan have been put up in Gurudwaras managed by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee in Delhi, as per a report in ANI. 

“Close to 200 families have come here and are staying in Gurudwaras. We are making the arrangements for their accommodation and ticket as well till the time they do not get permanent citizenship. We are also providing them assistance in employment as well,” Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee president Manjinder Singh Sirsa said while speaking to ANI. 

He added that all the costs would be borne by the management committee. He also thanked the Central government, particularly Home Minister Amit Shah for facilitating visas for these families. 

“Home Minister Amit Shah Ji from Day 1 gave the assurance that they can stay here for as long as they want and if they want to be permanent citizens of India, we would make them permanent citizens as well,” he added. 

“There are 138 persons in 31 rooms living over here. We are providing them with all the basic amenities to live. We will also try to have the children enrolled in Guru Harkishan Public Schools and will teach them free of cost if the need arises,” Harjit S Bedi, Chief VC, Gurudwara, Motibagh said while speaking to ANI. 

Bedi further said that the persons could stay in the gurudwara for as long as they need to. “In the case of earning bread and butter, they need to be emotionally secure. In the case of residential, they are secure over here,” he added. 

63-year-old Balbir Singh, a resident in Afghanistan, one of the Sikhs who along with his family were brought here by the Government of India, from Afghanistan over the attacks faced by minorities in the country, said that he was grateful to the gurudwara for looking after him and his family. 

“We are very thankful to them. They provided us with everything and ensured that we did not face any shortage of anything,” he said while speaking to ANI. 

“We left everything including our houses–I had a clothes store. Our lives were in danger but now, we feel safe here,” he added. 

The Ministry of External Affairs recently announced that India has decided to facilitate the return of Afghan Hindu and Sikh community members facing security threats in Afghanistan to India. 

The decision comes after a terror attack at a gurdwara in Kabul’s Shor Bazaar in March killed at least 25 members of the community. 

India has condemned the “targeting and persecution” of minority community members by terrorists in Afghanistan at the behest of their external supporters remains a matter of grave concern. 

Leaders of the Afghan Sikh community have appealed to the Indian government to accommodate the Sikhs and Hindus from Afghanistan and grant them legal entry with long term residency multiple entry visas. 

Once a community of nearly 250,000 people, the Sikh and Hindu community in Afghanistan has endured years of discrimination and violence from extremists, and the community is now estimated to comprise fewer than 100 families across the country.

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Rebuilding faith for displaced Sikh and Hindu Afghan families

Source: Hindustan Times

Vikramjit Singh Sahney, international president of World Punjabi Organisation (WPO) arranged for three chartered flights, and not only helped Sikh and Hindu Afghan families, but also brought back the holy book, Guru Granth Sahib ji from Kabul.

A home is not just a physical place made of bricks and mortar; it is an eco-system cultivated with love. But when the very place that once was a refuge turns hostile, where does one go? The Afghan Sikh and Hindu families found themselves in a similar situation when radicals attacked a gurudwara in Kabul on March 25. In a bid to safely evacuate them and bring them to India, Vikramjit Singh Sahney, international president of World Punjabi Organisation (WPO) sprung into action. He arranged for three chartered flights, and not only helped these families, but also brought back the holy book, Guru Granth Sahib ji from Kabul. The last of these flights arrived in India on September 3.

“The first challenge was to evacuate them. There were no flights, so we arranged approvals for chartered flights. We brought back 420 Sikh and Hindu families in three flights. We also brought back Guru Granth Sahib ji with full dignity”, says Sahney, who bore the expenses for these flights. These families were spread in various cities of Afghanistan, including Jalalabad, Kandahar and Ghazni, which further lead to problems. “We had to cancel a flight twice because the people were unable to reach Kabul due to the civil unrest in that country. We chose not to go to the media because we didn’t want anyone to face threats,” he explains.

From this experience, Sahney says that one thing is very clear: that the people do not want to fight. “Their Muslim neighbours never wanted them to leave. They lived like families and were in tears as they left. They were discouraging them from leaving. There is no animosity among people; only some radical groups create trouble,” he says.

With the doors closed on their homes, the only way forward is to help rehabilitate these families in India. “I, along with Dalip Singh Sethi (Los Angeles) and Paramjit Singh Bedi (New York) have launched a programme called My Family My Responsibility, under which all the families are being sponsored by Sikh NRIs, World Punjabi Organisation and Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee under MS Sirsa. Three quarantine centres have been set up for them in Gurudwara Rakab Ganj, Bangla Sahib and Moti Bagh. They will stay there for two months till we can find them furnished accommodation,” he says. Under the progamme, they will help meet their household expenses for two years, including education of children. 

In addition to his duties at the WPO, Sahney is also the chairman of Sun Foundation, an NGO. “We set up a world class skill centre at Jail Road and will train some of these kids with job-oriented courses like data entry operator, mechanic, freighter, and for girls, fashion designing and embroidery,” says Sahney, with a hope that these families do not meet the fate of other displaced people.

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