Author:
Publication: Tehran Times
Date: June 10, 2002
Afghanistan's tiny Hindu and Sikh
communities, forced to the brink of extinction by the Taleban regime, are
hoping to make a social and political re-emergence at this week's Loya
Jirga Assembly.
The minority groups, persecuted
during the six years of the ultra-orthodox Islamic regime, will be represented
by four delegates at the tribal gathering which is to select a new leadership
for Afghanistan, AFP reported.
Community leaders said their presence
at the assembly was a reassertion of the rights of the nation's only non-Muslim
minorities and that they expected the tribal gathering to alleviate the
suffering of the country's 30,000 Sikhs and Hindus.
"We take it as the return of our
luck. In almost a decade, for the first time our rights have been determined
and we have to defend our rights," said Awtar Singh, a delegate to the
Loya Jirga from the eastern province of Paktia.
"We want somebody who would treat
all Afghans -- irrespective of their religious and ethnic backgrounds --
as his own equal children," said Singh, who is in charge of the main Sikh
temple in Kabul.
Sikhs and Hindus, united in adversity,
are close in Afghanistan, unlike their counterparts in India where the
faiths are clearly separate.
In predominantly Muslim Afghanistan,
they share the same temples as well as many religious ceremonies.
Singh said the four representatives
were appointed to sit among the 1,551 Loya Jirga delegates from 22 communities
in 11 different provinces across the country.
Balbir Singh, 52, the temple's priest,
lamented the social injustices Hindus and Sikhs had faced since the fall
of the Communist regime in 1992 but said they now felt optimistic about
their future.
"Now there is no obstacle and no
opposition to our religious rituals," he said in the city's main Kart-i-Parwan
temple.
"We are from Afghanistan, having
to share its every joy and grief. Loya Jirga is very important for us because
we have suffered under the Taleban, we had our temples destroyed," he said.
The priest called upon the Loya
Jirga delegates, who will meet from June 10 to 16, not to discriminate
against the country's religious minorities.
"We want them to do for us what
they will do for the rest because Afghanistan is our common home," he said.
The decade-long civil war and particularly
the six years of Taleban rule saw the numbers of Hindus and Sikhs plummet
from a few hundred thousand to only 30,000.
As relatively well-off minorities,
they were the first to be targeted with looting when Mujahedin in-fighting
broke out in 1992 after the fall of the Communist-backed regime.
The eight Sikh and Hindu temples
in the capital Kabul were ransacked and destroyed.
The Taleban, who won international
notoriety for their ultra- puritanical interpretation of Islamic sharia
law, forced them to wear yellow badges to distinguish them from the Muslim
majority.
Autar Singh, an ex-officer from
the Paktia Army Corps, recounted a long list of edicts announced by the
religious militia which were aimed at eventually ridding Afghanistan of
its Hindu and Sikh population.
"We were told not to wear Muslim
outfits, not to carry guns, not to mingle with Muslims, not to build more
temples, to wear yellow clothes and to put up yellow flags on our houses
and shops," he said.
"The most dreadful was that those
of us who have migrated outside could never return back as Afghans." Although
community representatives say the situation has changed for the better
since the Taleban's ouster, they have yet to reclaim 250 houses taken illegally
by military commanders in the city's Kart-i-Parwan area.
"These are people's houses handed
to the care of the temple.
Some people have moved in and when
we want back our houses they ask us for the documents," Singh said.
The political changes here have
encouraged some Afghan Hindus and Sikhs now living in India to consider
returning home, he said, but a major deterrent was the fact there were
no proper education facilities for their children here.
Hindu and Sikh students are still
hesitant to attend the general schools in fear of harassment, and the city's
only temple-run special school is not functioning properly.
Baldip Kohr, a 12-year old female
student there, said the 100 young pupils were discouraged because "there
are no proper classes and teachers who come at 8:30 a.m. and leave after
one hour." Standing in front of a crowded class of boys and girls reading
in the local language of Dari as well as Punjabi, Kohr said she was happy
to have seen the back of the Taleban.
"They were bad and they beat us.
I am very happy they are gone," she said.
