- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
WHILE the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan has left the minority communities in the war-torn nation apprehensive and they want to leave the country at the earliest but not all of them are eager to come to India either.
According to a report by a site that covers news related to Punjab and Sikhs, the Sikhs staying in Afghanistan are not keen to return to India despite the Taliban recapturing power because of a bitter experience in the past.
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One Sikh businessman based in Kabul told the site that although the Taliban have made rapid advances through the country amid the western states’ troop pull-out, they are not planning to shift to India.
The man, whose name was changed, said, “We would never seek asylum in India due to our past bitter experience. Since many Sikh families who had come to India when suicide bomber attacked killed more than 19 people including 10 Sikhs in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad in 2018. Many had gone to India with the hope that they would move further Canada but got stuck there as remained unable to set up their business in India. Now they are neither Afghans nor Indian citizens. These Hindu and Sikh families had left Afghan after leaving their huge property, shops and lands behind abandoned and nothing was done for them by any of the Indian based Sikh organizations.”
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He said they would instead prefer to go to either Canada or the US if they extended help to the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus. “These two countries are already helping a lot of Afghan people who settled over there in the past,” he added.
The Sikh businessman said currently 270 Sikhs and 50 Hindus are living in a gurudwara in Kabul called ‘Karte parwar’ and the Taliban leaders visited the place and assured them safety.
