Helping hand

The worsening plight of Afghan Sikhs and how Canada is leading the campaign to rescue them

- MANDIRA NAYAR

FIVE YEARS AGO, Parwish Kumar left his home in Helmand, Afghanistan, in the dead of night. He did not want his neighbours to notice. “My father needed blood,” says the Afghan Sikh. “But everyone refused. No one wanted to give blood to a kafir.” His father later died in hospital.

“Those who have been left in Afghanistan are just waiting to leave,” says Kumar, who now lives in Delhi and is waiting to find a home in Canada.

The March 25 attack on the Har Rai Sahib Gurdwara in Shor Bazaar, in the heart of Kabul’s old city, exposed the vulnerability of the Sikh community in Afghanistan. The gurdwara was home to more than 50 families, who have now been taken to another gurdwara in Karte Parwan. Kabul now has three gurdwaras; it had 70 in the 1970s.

After videos of the terrorist attack went viral, the global campaign to save the Sikhs in Afghanistan was intensified. At the helm of this effort is Canada, which is emerging as the promised land of Sikhs. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, tweeted, “The plight of Afghan Sikhs and Hindus is one of tremendous suffering....”, and called on the government to save their lives.

In a letter addressed to the prime minister and Canadian ministers, poet Rupi Kaur wrote: “Canada is the best and perhaps the only country able to help this vulnerable population. Nearby countries like India are not an option.”

The reasons cited for rejecting India include it not being “a signatory to international protocols and conventions on refugees”, and also the 1984 riots.