Kabul gurdwara attack turns spotlight on CAA

KN Pandita

Ex-Director, Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University

KN Pandita
Ex-Director, Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University.

Sikhs have suffered widespread discrimination in Afghanistan and have also been targeted by the Islamic extremists. Under Taliban rule in the late 1990s, they were asked to identify themselves by wearing yellow armbands, but the rule was not enforced. In recent years, a large number of Sikhs and Hindus have sought asylum in India, which has a Hindu majority and a large Sikh population. In July 2018, a convoy of Sikhs and Hindus was attacked by an Islamic State suicide bomber as they were on their way to meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the eastern city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province. Nineteen people were killed in that attack, wrote the Los Angeles Times in its issue of March 26.

On March 24, heavily armed terrorists attacked a group of nearly 200 Sikh and Hindu worshippers in the gurdwara at Shor Bazaar in Kabul city. The ISIS claimed the attack. At the same time, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, not only denied any involvement in the carnage, but also disparaged it. However, the July 2018 attack on the Sikh and Hindu delegation in Jalalabad, in which 19 were killed and 21 injured, was claimed by the Taliban.

It is pertinent to know something about the Sikh-Hindu minority of Indian origin in Afghanistan before we attempt an analysis of the tragic event in Kabul.

India-Afghanistan relations go back to the times of the migration of Aryans from Central Asia to the plains of India in the hoary past. The Kushan empire, with its capital at Pushkalavati, modern Peshawar, was the disseminator of many strands of common culture among the people of the vast geographical region. It was only during the British colonial rule over India that strict restrictions were imposed on the Indians in perpetuating their age-old relations with the people to the immediate west of India — Afghans, Iranians and those in Central Asia.

During the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a large number of Sikhs and Hindus of Indian origin, conducting trade in Afghanistan, settled down in that country and with time, became its nationals. These brave and adventurous people not only conducted their affairs honestly, but also befriended the Afghan people and their culture, language and lifestyle. They felt proud to be called Afghans, and conversely, they received friendly, rather fraternal treatment, from the Afghans. As an integral part of Afghan society, they have taken part in the political process of the country. Anarkali Kaur Hunaryar is a member of the Afghan Senate and Narendra Singh Khalsa is an MP in the Afghan Parliament.

The Afghan Hindu-Sikh minority never became a source of embarrassment, either for the Afghan or the Indian government. Conversely, they usually contributed to the strengthening of Indo-Afghan ties over the centuries, especially in recent cataclysmic times. The attachment of the Sikh and Hindu minorities to Afghanistan, which is now the motherland of those who were born and brought up in that country, made them build temples and gurdwaras and they never faced any obstruction in performing their religious rites. This was a true and happy picture of secularism, a philosophy about which neither the Afghans nor Indians made any fetish and took it as a way of life.

The Sikhs and Hindus first apprehended danger in Afghanistan in 1996, the year Pakistan-sponsored Taliban captured power in Kabul and declared Afghanistan an Islamic caliphate. The Taliban showed no sympathy to them because of deep ideological brainwashing, through which the Taliban had gone in Pakistan’s seminaries. Even then, the Sikhs and Hindus tried not to panic and survived a difficult time with great fortitude.

When the Taliban rule became unbearably oppressive and the Talibs began massacring their brethren, the Sikhs and Hindus became fear-struck. Some of them left Afghanistan and came to India seeking out their relatives for succour.

When the US decided to take on the Afghan Taliban after finding that the Taliban had links with Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda, the Sikh and Hindu minority members in exile in India began moving gradually back to their country. A national government replaced the Taliban in Kabul in 2001 and the members of the religious minority felt safe under the new dispensation. They resumed normal life, though the threat did not leave, and recurrent incidents of Taliban attacks on nationalist forces and civilians continued throughout the US and NATO operations.

In July 2018, there was a Taliban attack on a Sikh-Hindu delegation heading towards Jalalabad. The question that was often discussed in political circles in New Delhi and Chandigarh was why the Sikhs and Hindus were staying back and not moving in the face of instability that was likely to engulf Afghanistan once the American troops were withdrawn.

The process of engaging the Taliban for talks with the US through the instrumentality of Pakistan was known to them. They and the entire world, both were aware that the Americans wanted to wriggle out of the stranglehold of Taliban somehow. It should have prompted the Afghan religious minority to reconsider their position in an Afghanistan where now the Americans were not averse to the Taliban becoming a component of the new government. The religious minority failed to make a dispassionate assessment of the upcoming situation.

Finally, the axe fell when the US-Taliban deal was signed in Doha recently and not only the Sikh-Hindu minority but also large segments of nationalist Afghans were under the threat of decimation. The threat was loud and clear when only a day after signing the US-Taliban deal, the latter launched a massive attack in an eastern province of Afghanistan and killed many people. They made it clear that unless their 5,000 captives with the American forces were released, their attacks would continue. The hand of Pakistan agencies in this dastardly massacre cannot be ruled out, although officially, Pakistan has condemned the heinous crime.

The tussle between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah for the presidency has become complicated and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after failing to reconcile the two claimants for the post of President, announced the cutting off of $1 billion annual aid to Afghanistan. The deal does not seem to have stabilised.

The Sikh and Hindu communities in Afghanistan, numbering more than 10,000, are in a state of uncertainty. In all probability, they may have to repatriate to India. We would like to ask those in India who are opposing the CAA: what if all these tens of thousands of Sikhs and Hindus approach the government for asylum on humanitarian grounds and choose to change their nationality? The CAA was enacted keeping in mind these realities. Will the Kabul gurdwara episode make them re-think their opposition and talk realpolitik?

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.