Author: Shahabuddin Tarakhel in
Kabul
Publication: Institute for War
& Peace Reporting
Date: November 5, 2003
URL: http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/arr/arr_200311_80_3_eng.txt
Hindu and Sikh community wants to
reopen Kabul cemetery for cremations, but locals object.
Kabul's Hindu and Sikh communities
are finding it hard to hold funerals because local residents object to
open-air cremations.
Despite the objections, Afghanistan's
religious affairs ministry has promised to let Sikhs and Hindus reclaim
their traditional sites and use them to cremate the dead.
Awtar Singh, who represented the
Sikh community at last year's Loya Jirga or grand national assembly, estimates
that there are 64 Hindu and Sikh temples and 20 cremation grounds in Afghanistan,
although most have been destroyed in years of war.
The Hindu and Sikh communities -
traditionally involved in trade - have shrunk from tens of thousands in
the Eighties to just a few thousand, as most left the country because of
the continual conflict or the prejudice they faced. As non-Muslims, they
had an especially tough time under the hard-line Taleban regime, which
announced plans to make them wear badges that would mark them out.
Those who remained, or are now returning,
find it difficult to reclaim their religious sites. Sometimes this is because
powerful people have seized the land. In the case of the cremation site
in Khamdan Qalacha in south-eastern Kabul, the objections come from local
people who do not want funeral pyres so close to their homes.
"After ten years, we wanted to burn
our corpses in the Kabul cremation ground, but people in the area won't
let us because 95 per cent of them are against us burning our dead bodies
there," said Awtar Singh.
Both Sikhs and Hindus - who in Afghanistan
are generally referred to collectively as Hindus - currently have to travel
to other towns to cremate their dead.
"A 70-year-old woman died, and we
had to take her to Ghazni in spite of the fact that the government has
announced several times that Hindus and Sikhs should be given their rights,"
Awtar Singh told IWPR. "But our rights are being trampled on."
Inder Singh Majboor, 42, who also
transported a body to Ghazni to be burnt, appealed to the authorities to
back the community's claim, "I ask the government to give us our Hindu
cremation ground back in Kabul, so that we can perform our duties close
by.. Our fathers and ancestors burned their dead here."
In the years that the site was in
disuse, housing sprang up closer and closer to it. Now the residents say
that despite the high walls surrounding the grounds, they are against the
cremations resuming.
"If Hindus bring their corpses here
they will be faced by popular resistance, because the people of this area
- male and female, young and old - don't want Hindus to burn their dead
bodies here," said Abdul Wali Sahi, 43, a community leader in Khamdan Qalacha.
Local Muslims say their objections
are based not on religious prejudice, but on practicalities. Sahi says
the Hindus can build anything they want on the site, "but we can't accept
their cremation ground".
Abdul Salam, 52, who lives with
seven family members about 200 metres away from the cremation ground, said
lighting funeral pyres is inappropriate in a residential area, "The Hindus
have not burned their dead bodies here for ten years now. Our children
will be very shocked if they begin to do this again. They could be frightened
and have mental problems."
Sikhs and Hindus face similar difficulties
elsewhere in Afghanistan.
In the southern province of Khost,
Charan Singh Sachdev said his community has been forced to carry out cremations
at a private home because the site gifted to them in the Eighties has been
seized by a local mujahedin commander and a tribal leader. Religious rites
are carried out at a school because the temple was destroyed by rocket-fire
in the early Nineties.
Ataurahman Salim, an under-secretary
at the Haj ministry which oversees religious affairs in Afghanistan, told
IWPR that the authorities were doing their best to look after the rights
of religious minorities, and would not allow their temples and cremation
grounds to be appropriated by anyone else.
"We look on the 'Indian' Afghans
as we do other Afghans," he said. "Kabul's Hindu cremation ground has a
200-year history. We are sending a delegation to the people of that area
[to tell them] not to disturb these Hindus, and to let them burn their
dead."
Salim added that his ministry would
be working with the Indian government, which has offered to help restore
three temples in Jalalabad, Kabul and Ghazni, as well as three mosques
in Kapisa, Kabul and Paghman districts.
Shahabuddin Tarakhel is an independent
journalist in Kabul.
