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Afghan Hindus deny asking Taliban for distinguishing mark

Afghan Hindus deny asking Taliban for distinguishing mark

Author:
Publication: Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Date: May 24, 2001

Members of the Hindu community in Afghanistan denied Thursday that the community had asked the ruling Islamic Taliban to require them to wear a distinguishing mark on their clothing to brand them as Hindus.

Jalalabad has the main concentration of the small Hindu community of Indian origin in the country, not more than 100 families in all.

"I came from Kabul last night. There I met Hindu compatriots too. Nobody made any such (identity-mark) request to the Taliban," Amar Das, head priest of the temple and political leader of the Hindu community in Jalalabad, told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Das, 52, said when the radical Islamic Taliban captured Jalalabad in 1996, their "Virtue and Vice" department asked its non-Moslem men to wear caps and women to put on the veil, which was accepted.

But its demand that the cap be red, or they should have some other identity mark, was rejected.

"We will not accept the latest order (about a yellow mark) also. If they force it upon us, we will try to leave the country. But we prefer to live in Afghanistan because it is our homeland," he said.

Taliban officials had claimed that the decision to make Hindus wear a yellow badge was taken at the community's request because Hindus, who look like ordinary Afghan Moslems otherwise, were feeling harassed by the religious police.

The police have the task of seeing that Moslems in Afghanistan do not deviate from Islamic norms in public. Men are required to wear beards and women the veil. Both sexes have to offer Islamic prayers.

If they were forced to leave, the Hindus would ask India to facilitate visa matters, Das said.

"A distinguishing mark would hurt our dignity and also business. We are mostly businessmen. As marked men, we will lose clients," he said.

But the Hindu community leader had praise as well for the Taliban. "Life has been fine until now. Their government has been the best one since 1979 (the year when the misfortunes of Afghanistan began with the invasion by the former Soviet Union)," he said.

Das said he would not want India to retaliate against the Taliban by similarly branding Indian Moslems. "Not all. Indian Moslems are our brothers," he said, condemning the demolition of the Babri Mosque in India by Hindu zealots in 1992.

Asked about a related order to non-Moslem Afghans not to worship in public places, Das said this did not concern Hindus as they worshipped in temples anyway and these were not open to the public.

At the temple, a Pakistani Hindu at prayer, Lal Jain, shrugged off a request for his comments on the Taliban action, saying, "It is an internal matter of the Afghans."

Das's 60-year-old deputy, Ashiq Kumar, said the Hindus had followed the Taliban-prescribed norms but were unhappy with the indentity-mark order.

"We close our shops at (Islamic) prayer times. Our women go out with their heads covered and men put on caps. But they did not even consult us on the identity-mark order."

Kumar's worry was that his community would get the blame "if a Moslem puts on the Hindu mark and commits some crime, some mischief."

A Hindu shopkeeper, Sanjay Kumar, 22, said bluntly the Taliban had not asked Hindus' views. "They never consulted us," he said.

There are Indian-origin Sikhs in the country as well, but they make themselves distinguishable as non-Moslems by wearing beards, turbans and metal bangles as mandated by their own religion.

The Taliban order applies to Afghan nationals only and Hindu and Christian visitors are exempted from the identity order.

Gorang Singh, a leader of Jalalabad's Sikh community, had no objection to the distinguishing marks for the Hindus.

"It will be of benefit to the Hindus. There is nothing degrading about it. With a yellow badge on them, they will be spared by the Vice and Virtue police."

Before the communist takeover of Afghanistan in 1978, there were an estimated 40,000 Hindus in the country. But in the decades of war that followed in the name of Islam, their number has been reduced to about 2,000.
 


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