IRIN focus on Sikh community

Selling fabrics along Jalalabad’s Bajazi Street, 30 year-old Manor Singh strikes an imposing figure. Crowned with a vibrant red turban, and wearing a silver bangle on his left arm, he is easily identifiable as a member of Afghanistan’s dwindling Sikh community. His shop awash with the latest colours and styles, he smiles broadly at his fellow Afghans, balancing business and diplomacy in the Taliban-controlled country. “We are happy and don’t have any problems,” he told IRIN. “The Sikh community is doing well.” Given the Taliban’s dismal human rights record, prompting scathing international criticism for their efforts to impose Islamic law on the country’s 20 million citizens, it is difficult to gauge how truthful Manor’s statement is. That apart, however, it is a fact that the Sikh community is in many ways faring better than their Muslim counterparts. “In general, the Sikh community does not have any problems with the authorities. They run their own businesses and economically are doing better than most Afghans,” one UN official told IRIN. “More importantly, they are allowed to practise their religion freely, and there is no restriction on their movement,” he added. Sikhism - the name of a religion established more than 500 years ago as a bridge between Islam and Hinduism - is derived from the Punjabi word sikh, meaning disciple. The Adi Granth, the Sikh equivalent of the Bible or Koran, teaches that God is not a personal saviour or a superhuman force, but the abstract principle of truth. Classified by Muslims as Ahl-e-zimmah, or a protected minority, and Ahl-e-kitab - people of the book - who include Jews and Christians, Sikhs are more easily tolerated because there are more similarities between their faith and Islam than there are in the case of other religions. In his recently published book on the Taliban, entitled “Taliban-Islam, Oil and the New Great Game”, regional analyst and writer Ahmed Rashid writes that Islam in Afghanistan has historically been immensely tolerant of other Muslim sects, other religions, and of modern lifestyles. Until 1992, the religious minorities played a significant role in the country’s economy. Traditionally these minorities controlled the money market in urban centres, and when Afghan kings went to war they often borrowed money from them, the author says. For generations, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews lived in harmony with Muslim Afghans. Their rights were respected, and they regarded themselves to be Afghans much as the Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks or Uzbeks born and raised in the country did. But that reality is no more. Of the estimated 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs living in Afghanistan 10 years ago, most have left. There are only about 1,000 Sikhs left in the country today, half of them concentrated in Jalalabad, the provincial and commercial capital of the eastern Nangarhar Province. Today most work as merchants selling cloth, tea, herbal medicines and spices in the city’s market area. Locals say the Sikhs enjoy “unprecedented” freedom at a time when the Taliban authorities are imposing increasingly harsh laws on their Muslim citizens. Outside the Guru Nanak temple - one of two remaining Sikh places of worship in Jalalabad and said to have beeen built by Nanak, the founder of Sikhism himself, that such freedom is put to the test every day. As dusk begins to settle, worshippers, young and old, gather in front of the temple, which is sited in the Daramsal district - the kernel of the city’s Sikh community. “Sikhs are completely free to worship as they want,” Narinder Singh, a 52 year-old temple elder, told IRIN. “Our biggest problem is that we cannot go to India to visit our families that are now living there,” he said. He explained that many Sikh families had become separated after leaving Afghanistan the country for the subcontinent 10 years ago when security in the country deteriorated. He himself has been unable to secure an Indian visa to go to see his family for three years. Sikhs left Afghanistan en masse, along with thousands of Hindus, after Hindu extremists destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, India in December 1992. Seeking revenge, radical Muslims in Afghanistan saw their countrymen of Indian origin as soft targets, and engaged in large-scale looting of Hindu and Sikh temples countrywide. Whereas both communities had already suffered from the war in Afghanistan, it was this event that struck them hardest. According to Narinder, although members of the Taliban occasionally visit the Sikh temples, they do not intrude on activities there. “They are curious about our religion,” he explains. Pointing to a nearby building, he said there were 80 to 90 Sikh children being educated at a school there - another activity the Taliban had respectfully distanced itself from. At this point, anxious that Narinder might say something out of place, another elder began remonstrating with him. “Why do you talk so much? You’re only going to get us into trouble,” he warned. When it comes to religious differences, for Afghanistan’s minorities, saying and doing the right thing is vital. Earlier this year, the world was outraged when Taliban soldiers destroyed all the Buddhist statues - including the world’s largest in the country’s central Bamian Province, after the Taliban supreme commander, Mola Mohammad Omar Mojahed, decreed them to be idols. The Taliban authorities then decreed that members of the remaining Hindu community wear yellow badges to distinguish them from Muslims. The Taliban asserts that the move was intended to protect the Hindus from harassment by police of the country’s feared Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice and Virtue, who patrol the streets to ensure that Islamic norms of dress and conduct are maintained in public. In Afghanistan, men are required to be bearded, while women must wear veils and clothing which completely conceal their faces and bodies, according to the Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic Shari’ah law. Unlike the Sikhs, who are easily identifiable by the beards, turbans and metal bangles laid down by their religion, the Hindus are less so, and have yet to observe the ruling. In August, eight foreign nationals and 16 Afghans of the German-based Christian NGO Shelter Now International were arrested on charges of proselytising Christianity, a crime punishable by death. Today, they remain in two separate detention centres in Kabul awaiting trial, and the status of other Christian NGOs working there is now under scrutiny. It is thus clear to the Sikhs that recognising their limits with the Taliban is of paramount importance for their survival. For the Sikhs, the main problem at the moment is harassment by the resident Arab community, rather than by the Taliban. “The Arabs are suspicious of us,” one Sikh, who declined to be identified, told IRIN. He recalled three separate incidents in which Sikhs had been beaten up by Arab youths in the city. “Finally we couldn’t take it any more and called upon the Taliban authorities to do something about it, and they did,” he said. The Taliban had sought to reassure them that they were safe, and that there would be no further problems from the Arabs. Another problem is an economic one. Although Sikhs appear more prosperous than Muslims after 23 years of war and the worst drought in 30 years, they too are being affected by Afghanistan’s sustain economic downturn. “The Sikhs that remain now are the poor ones,” Amergit Singh told IRIN. “The rich ones who had the means have long since left.” The 18 year-old spice seller conceded that while the Taliban did not restrict his freedom of worship, he felt his future lay abroad. “If given the opportunity to go to India, I would,” he said, adding that nearly 160 Sikhs had left the country due to security concerns last year, and another 50 wanted to leave this year, but were unable to do so. Meanwhile, most Sikhs are cautious with their comments today, but most would agree with what one of their number told IRIN. “Ours is a delicate balance. “We have learned to live with it, and the Taliban have come to respect it.”