On September 11, a group of Afghan Sikhs who were planning to travel to India was prevented from doing so because the Guru Granth Sahib was listed as Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. There are said to be less than 100 Afghan Sikhs left, of which this final significant group of 60 are unwilling to leave their country without the four Guru Granth Sahib. Afghan Sikhs first began to escape their homeland in the 1990s.
President of the Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee in Amritsar, Harjinder Singh Dhami, strongly condemned the action on September 14, describing it as a blatant intrusion into the religious matters of Sikhs.
The Guru Granth Sahib was previously transported by Afghan Sikhs in December of last year during emergency evacuations carried out by India following the Taliban regime’s takeover. The new system was still stabilizing at the time, therefore there was no such stringent process in place.
The Afghan Sikh community here is quite concerned about the growth. Many of the people who are still in Afghanistan have families that arrived in India earlier while they stayed behind to take care of the gurudwaras. An estimated 20,000 Afghan Sikhs are in India, most of whom are in Delhi.
News Mania Desk
