KABUL, Afghanistan: Indian government says it will streamline visas and long-term residence for Afghanistan’s small Hindu and Sikh minorities, curtailed by decades of persecution and decimated by attacks in recent years amid the Afghan war .
“India has decided to facilitate the return of members of the Hindu and Sikh Afghan community facing security threats in Afghanistan to India,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The statement, about the rescue of an Afghan Sikh leader who was kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan last month, did not provide further details.
An Indian official in Kabul said the decision meant that any of the roughly 600 Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, would receive priority visas and the opportunity to apply for long-term residence once they arrived in India.
In interviews, many welcomed the emergency option, but said it posed a dying dilemma. In Afghanistan, they have livelihoods (shops and businesses passed down from generation to generation), but they spend their days fearing the next attack. Making a fresh start in India would likely mean living in poverty, they said, particularly during an economic recession exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
Lala Sher Singh, 63, who lives near a Sikh temple in Kabul that was attacked in March, said the community had shrunk so much that its thoughts were busy “day and night” for fear that the next assault would not leaving enough people can perform the final rituals for the dead.
“They may kill me here because of these threats to Hindus and Sikhs, but in India I will die of poverty,” he said. “I have spent my entire life in Afghanistan. In this neighborhood near the temple, if I run out of money and I stop in front of a store and ask for two eggs and some bread, they will give it to me for free. But who will help me in India?
There was no official reaction from the Afghan government to India’s offer. A senior Afghan official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media, said the violence affected all Afghans and that a security offer for Hindus and Sikhs cast doubt on religious diversity in Afghanistan. .
The official said the move seemed aimed at a domestic audience in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to move the country away from its secular and multicultural foundations and give it a more openly Hindu identity, while projecting itself as an advocate for Hindus. persecuted. minorities elsewhere.
The Hindu nationalist government recently amended India’s laws in a way that critics say openly discriminates against Muslims, giving a fast track to citizenship for immigrants who are Hindus or members of five religious minorities, but not Muslim migrants. The law is one of the reasons why Muslims feel increasingly demonized and marginalized in India, although they are the second largest religious group and make up a seventh of the population.
The state of Afghan religious minorities is more uncertain than ever as the United States withdraws troops after more than 18 years and the Taliban, who ruled oppressively in the 1990s, are preparing to speak to the government about power. shared.
The battlefield has become more chaotic, joined by more extreme groups, such as a branch of the Islamic State that specifically targets vulnerable minorities.
The Hindu and Sikh communities in Afghanistan were once tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, with well-established businesses and high-ranking positions in government. But almost everyone has fled to India, Europe or North America during decades of war and persecution.
In the eastern Nangarhar province, only 45 families of thousands remain. In Paktia, another eastern province, only one family remains: Jagmohan Singh, an herbal doctor, and his wife and two of their children. His other two children have already left for Kabul.
“A few decades ago, there were around 3,000 families of Hindus and Sikhs in different areas and districts of Paktia,” said Dr. Singh. “Except for my family, they all ran away.”
As their numbers have been reduced, Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan often live in the same large complexes and sometimes also share a place of worship.
Just over 600 Hindus and Sikhs now live in Afghanistan; Two major attacks in the past two years have killed about 50, leaving virtually all families scarred.
The most recent attack was a six-hour siege by Islamic State militants at a Sikh temple and housing complex in Kabul in March that left 25 people dead, including young children.
After the attack, when community leaders voiced alarm, Afghan officials, including the national security adviser, promised new security measures. But Narendra Singh Khalsa, community representative in the Afghan Parliament, said the temple remained closed and unrepaired. Except for a few additional police officers in the area, they had received no support that could alleviate their concerns.
“They have made some checkpoints where there are several police officers present,” said Warjet Singh, 22, who runs a store outside the temple, where his mother, father and brother were killed. “But officials know that they cannot avoid any attack with a police officer standing in front of the temple,” he added.
“There are no changes in our situation,” he said. “I still risk my life when I go out to work every morning; I am still concerned about another attack on our complex. “
Singh, who received financial assistance from the Afghan government, said life had become unbearable since the attack took his family and deprived him of a place of worship. His wife, who is pregnant with their first child, was afraid to go to the hospital because a maternity ward was recently attacked and mothers and babies were killed.
“When India provides a long-term visa, I will go live there until the security situation is better in my own country so that I can return,” Singh said. “No one will take my country from me, but it is important for me to survive so that I can return when things are good.”
At best, India can be like a lifeboat – an emergency option for families taking it, but lacking the security of a long-term solution.
Rawail Singh’s relatives moved to New Delhi more than a year ago, but life there has not been easy. Singh was an activist who was one of 14 Sikhs killed in a 2018 suicide bombing in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, on the way to a meeting with President Ashraf Ghani.
Mr. Singh’s wife, Preeti, said that she moved her three children to India in the months after her husband’s death. Her 16-year-old son Prince found work as an apprentice at a tailor shop, where he was paid about $ 110 a month. With that, bolstered by occasional help from friends in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the family managed in the two rooms they rented for $ 30 a month.
But when the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Prince lost his job; the tailor said he could no longer afford to pay the apprentices. Preeti said his family spent his days confined to his two rooms, waiting for help paying the rent.
Prince is still looking for a job, but hasn’t found anything yet.
“No one is giving us a job,” he told his mother recently. “People say, ‘I can barely feed my own family, let alone hire you.'”
Farooq Jan Mangal, Zabihullah Ghazi and Fatima Faizi contributed reports.
