Handful of Sikhs living in Afghanistan donate relief material for earthquake victims in Kunar

Afghanistan witnessed the exodus of Sikhs and Hindus after the takeover by the Taliban on August 15, 2021

Donated by the gurdwara committee, the relief material has been sent to Kunar, the worst-hit province, where over a thousand people died

A handful of Sikhs who stayed in Afghanistan did not forget to perform ‘sewa’ for their country, where an earthquake claimed 1,400 lives.

On Tuesday, the tiny community dispatched relief material for earthquake victims from Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar in Afghanistan’s Jalalabad. Donated by the gurdwara committee, the relief material has been sent to Kunar, the worst-hit province, where over a thousand people died.

Afghanistan witnessed the exodus of Sikhs and Hindus after the takeover by the Taliban on August 15, 2021. Since then, the majority of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus have either shifted to India or to other countries such as Canada, Australia and Germany. However, around 50-55 Afghan Sikhs continued to live in their homeland to take care of their gurdwaras and shops, which once had flourishing businesses. Some keep shuttling between India and Afghanistan as their families are settled in cities like Delhi and Ludhiana, among others.

Story continues below this ad

But even as the tiny community was forced out of their motherland in 2021, they came together in the time of crisis to help people devastated by the earthquake.

Speaking with The Indian Express over the phone, Manjeet Singh Lamba, president, Afghan Hindu & Sikh Minorities Council, said, “We have sent relief material such as wheat bags, cooking oil and clothes for victims in Kunar. This sewa has been performed by our gurdwara committee. The material was dispatched from Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbar in Jalalabad today (Tuesday).”

Lamba said around 50-55 members of the Sikh community were currently living in Afghanistan to perform sewa at gurdwaras in the country. “Many of our members have Indian nationality, and they keep visiting to help us. But now India has stopped issuing us visas, and I haven’t been able to visit my family back home. We urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to start giving us multiple-entry visas again. Our families are in India and we can’t leave gurdwaras here,” he added.

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram