Pakistani Sikhs being displaced by Taliban militants

LAHORE: Over 300 Pakistani Sikhs, who were recently forced by the Taliban militants in Buner district of the Orakzai Agency to leave their homes after their failure to pay extortion money, have finally taken shelter at the Gurdwara Punja Sahib, one of their holiest sites, located in the Hassanabdal town of the Pakistani Punjab.

According to the official sources in the Orakzai agency, the followers of the Most Wanted Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’s fugitive chief commander Baitullah Mehsud have forcibly occupied dozens of houses and shops in Qasimkhel and Ferozkhel areas of Kalaya Tehsil in the Orakzai agency following their failure to arrange the protection money. The Taliban were of the view that the Sikhs are a minority and liable to pay the tax for living in the area in accordance with the shariah laws. As the Sikhs failed to pay the tax, hundreds of them have been forced to leave the Orakzai agency in the Federall Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of the country and move to the adjacent NWFP province. The Taliban henchmen had notified the Sikh families about the ‘tax’ last month and were now threatening them with dire consequences. Since most of the Sikh families in the Orakzai agency were impoverished, they decided to leave the area to avoid a possible Taliban action against them.

However, the Pakistan government has already rejected Indian concerns about the plight of Sikhs living in the Pakistan tribal area, saying the issue was being over exaggerated. However, the fact is that over 100 Sikh families have so far been displaced by the Taliban militants who have further demolished 11 homes of Sikhs living in Orakzai Agency. Therefore, hundreds of the displaced Sikhs have moved to the Gurdwara Sri Panja Sahib, Hasanabdal which usually remains empty this time of the year. The hallways of Panja sahib resound these days with the laughter of rosy cheeked Sikh children running around without the slightest care for their crumbling world as over a hundred families of displaced Sikhs try settling down in their temporary new home. And unfortunately, this number keeps growing by the hour.

According to the deputy administrator of the Pakistani Shrines Evacuee Trust Property Board, Syed Faraz Abbas, the board has, with the help of the Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, made elaborate arrangements to assist the 115 displaced Sikh families. According to one of the displaced Sikhs, Engineer Ravinder Singh, who hails from Peer Baba in Buner, a majority of the displaced families of the Orakzai agency were living in Peer Baba, Daggar, Dewana Baba, Jhangi, Gogga, Sawari, Changli and Ghourgohsti areas. He expressed the hpe that they would be help return to their homes the Pakistani authorities after the situation there improves.

To a question, Engineer Ravinder said the Sikhs of the Orakzai agency are being persecuted by the local Taliban militants under the garb of ‘jiziya’, or tax that minorities pay in Islam to a Muslim state in exchange for state protection and security of life and property. From several reports that have appeared of late, first in the Pakistani press, and now in the foreign press, the situation comes across as most startling and worrying. The Sikhs of Orakzai have lived in the agency for decades and by their own admission have never faced any problems or harassment from the tribes.

However, for the past few months, and especially after Hakeemullah Mehsud and his men descended on Orakzai and established their own rule, the Sikhs of the agency have lived a terrified existence. A good number of them have been veritably held at gunpoint and forced to pay extortion money. The Sikhs were reportedly told either they all convert or they pay the tax. And this is reinforced by published accounts of some of the Sikh family elders, one of whom was kidnapped and tortured by the Orakzai Taliban. However, the state of Pakistan has chosen to do nothing to take the Sikhs of Orakzai from the clutches of the Taliban.

Sikhism is a very small minority religion in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan but has many cultural, historical and political ties to the country, and to the historical region of Punjab. Pakistan’s estimated population was 172,800,000 in 2008, 96% Muslim, with Christians (1.6%) and Hindus (1.85%) making up the largest minority faiths, according to the last census taken in 1998. Sikhs, Buddhists, Ahmadi and some adherents to animist religions make up the remainder. The largest Sikh population in Pakistan is found in Peshawar, in Northwest Frontier Province, which was spared the scale of violence during partition that raged in Punjab. In recent times, there has been an influx in the population of Sikhs in Pakistan due to the turbulent civil war and conflicts that have ravaged the neighboring Afghanistan.

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