KABUL:Sikh and Hindu communities here no more have to agonise over finding a place to cremate their dead — a funeral ground vandalised by the Taliban has been restored to them. The Afghan government has given back the possession of the cremation ground in downtown Kabul to the two communities after getting encroachments removed from there.
Kabul Singh Sabha president Sardar Ravinder Singh said that cremations there had been resumed, though police protection was always sought as a precaution. He thanked President Hamid Karzai’s government for granting them full freedom to practise their religion without any hindrance and restoring the dignity of the community.
Hindus and Sikhs were not allowed by the Taliban rulers to cremate their dead in Kabul and the place was vandalised and encroached upon by fanatics. The difficulties faced in taking the dead to as far as Ghazni forced them to make arrangements for cremation within the Karte Parwan Gurdwara, which was the only one to have escaped destruction during the civil war in the 1990s.
The place is a pilgrimage for Hindus and Sikhs because it is believed to house the ‘samadhis’ of two direct descendants of the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak Dev.
The ground also has the samadhi of a Hindu saint, Misher Jagdish. The population of Sikhs in Afghanistan, once around 50,000, is believed to have dwindled to just over a thousand today because of the ethnic cleaning carried out by the Taliban.
