Tracing the History of Afghan Sikhs: Who Are They and What Happens to Them Now? – The Quint

Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first king of the Sikh Empire, had ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent, expanding his control to the Afghan region in the early years of the 19th century.

Following the zealous evangelist campaigns of the British, a Singh Sabha reformist movement emerged in the subcontinent in response to the proselytisation activities, which arrived in Afghanistan in the early years of the 20th century, writes Inderjeet Singh.

As part of the movement, prominent Sikh preacher Akali Kaur Singh had arrived in Nangararh province of Afghanistan in 1919 to preach the doctrine of Sikhism. Under his leadership, the Khalsa Diwan Afghanistan was established, which is credited with the propagation and preservation of Sikh values in the region.

Sikh Exodus from Afghanistan

The first instance of mass migration of Sikhs from Afghanistan came at the time of the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan when the fundamentalist zeitgeist of the Afghan society had troubled the indigenous Hindus and Sikhs. A large number of Sikhs had left their homeland and settled in India during this time, and formed an Afghan-Sikh community in Punjab's Patiala.

In 1988, Jalalabad's Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar has been the target of a terror attack, wherein 13 Sikhs were killed. According to Inderjeet Singh, over a hundred Sikhs died in the subsequent years during the Mujahideen's attacks in Jalalabad. In 1992, when the Mujahideen captured Kabul, the group desecrated Gurdwara Karte Parwan, the largest gurudwara of the city.

In 1992, close to 65,000 Hindus and Sikhs fled Afghanistan and came to India, Singh reports.

With the coming of the Taliban in 1996, the condition further deteriorated "The tolerance of diversity which had hitherto been such a characteristic of Afghan Islam rapidly began to evaporate in the face of the hard line jihadi and fundamentalist attitudes promoted by the Taliban," scholar Robert Ballard observed.

In the late 1980s, there were about 500,000 Sikhs scattered across Afghanistan, many who had been there for generations, according to a Reuters report. By 2005, about 3,700 persons belonging to the Hindu and Sikh communities remained, as per a UNHCR paper.

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Tracing the History of Afghan Sikhs: Who Are They and What Happens to Them Now? - The Quint