Swat Sikhs - Down but surely not out (Part-1)

[Naveed Yaseen]

Mariana Babar
Under normal circumstances Gurdwara Sri Panja Sahib, Hasanabdal (0ne of the holiest Sikh shrines) remains empty this time of the year, barring the few permanent resident families of caretakers. But then, these are hardly normal times for the people of Swat and Orakzai. The hallways of Panja sahib are resounding with the laughter of rosy cheeked 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 this number, unfortunately keeps growing by the hour.

The men sitting on charpoys appeared relaxed, and looking around. I may well have been peering through the window of a Hujra of my native village Pir Pai. Clad in typical Pashtun style shalwar kameez, they were clean shaven, spoke excellent pushto, which they also write and read effortlessly. In Pir Pai neither I nor these complete strangers would be so relaxed and custom would not even permit me to sit with them.

So no surprise, that we are inside Gurdawara Siri Panja Sahib, Hasanabdal, a cool oasis in this hot and dusty town of Punjab, just an hour’s drive from Rawalpindi. Security was not too stringent either except that the lady police ‘groped’ my handbag and the young policeman pretended to be interested in my NID card, not bothering to match the photograph and the woman before him! Maybe it was the fatigue of having to deal with the ever-growing queue of the displaced families, which appear to be trickling in almost without any break. And the mix too is hardly what you would have expected.

Dr M Kumar, 46, a freshly shaven Sikh, was a medical specialist who studied in Peshawar and went for higher studies to the UK and US. He is amongst the one hundred plus families that reached the Gurdawara a few days ago. As we spoke , more Sikh families from Buner and Swat continued to trudge into the Gurdawara with nothing but small bundles in their hands, while young children ran excitedly towards the new arrivals.

So now that he has fled his native village of Pir Baba, was Dr Kumar thinking of returning to the UK? “ Never. I returned to serve my community and will continue to do so. And if you are wondering why I look different from the Sardarjees across the room, (admittedly, it was somewhat of a surprise to see a clean shaven Pushto speaking Sikh from an otherwise conservative region) well, every Sikh is not a Khalsa. The Khalsa is a complete Sikh, and that is why I do not look like the traditional one”, said Kumar.

Soon the red turbaned D. Suran Singh, with a flowing beard, also joined us. Spotting his sprained leg, a young doctor from the Gurdawara immediately attended to him, applying ointment and slipping on a crepe bandage. You could feel a strong sense of communal bondage in this displaced lot.

“What is this propaganda that we have been forced to flee Swat and Buner because of the Taliban’s oppression? Please, the media has to distinguish between what happened to the Sikhs in the Orakzai agency, and why we have come here”, he pleads. On April 28-29, the Pakistan army started a military operation, and these Sikh families along with Muslim ones and the Afghan refugees got caught in the crossfire.

“It was not only the Sikhs but others too in the villages that decided that it was not safe for us to remain as the fierce fighting would have blown us to smithereens. We Sikhs are very peaceful people and have traditionally lived in the most peaceful areas of Pakistan. We are not armed. Our ancestors have lived in Buner for thousands of years and it was the fear of the “uncertainty” ahead that made us flee”, Singh tells us.

Soon other youngsters, mostly non-Khalsa, squeezed on to the charpoys while the younger ones kept peeping through the door.

But why come here? I asked. These Sikhs appeared relaxed and comfortable and say that they would have been a burden on their relatives in Peshawar and other towns. “We come often to this Gurdawara and our families are familiar with the surroundings, and all the men and women pitch in for the daily chores. We pray that unlike the Afghan refugees we can return home soon. For now, we are unified under the Panja of the Guru Nanak in this Gurdawara”, he adds.

When quizzed about the soft tone he adopted when he spoke about the Taliban and whether he did it out of fear, he responded, “Look, I am sitting inside a Gurdawara where I bow my head to the ground in prayers. Could I lie at such a holy site? The heavily armed Taliban came to our village , stopped their vehicles in the bazaar and greeted us. We too greeted them and offered them cold drinks. They said they would pay but we insisted. They have been around for quite some time now, but have left us alone. After all, we are not a threat to anyone. The sunnis and shias call each other kafir. We call everyone believers. It was simply fear that made us leave our hearth and homes”.

Other voices also chimed in, and admittedly a bit confused, I quickly made a call to my colleague Behroze Khan (Geo News) in Peshawar who has been reporting about the atrocities that the Sikh community faced at the hands of the Taliban. “Those are the ones from the Orakzai agency and have mostly gone to the Gurdawara in Peshawar,” he clarified. Meanwhile Singh carried on with his own take of the situation: “God only knows whether the ones in Orakzai who are victimizing the Sikhs, are even Taliban or not. They could be someone else in the guise of the Taliban. We are getting a lot of calls from our brethren from abroad fearing our safety and we reassured them that the government is facilitating us in every way possible. But I have just been told that Habib Bank in my village has been looted”, he bemoaned.

The others heard this breaking news in silence, but visibly shifted uneasily on the charpoy. “Who knows who looted the bank, whether it was the army or the Taliban? Right now we have no way of knowing. The Taliban have been around for three years but we were never under pressure”, says one of them. Why this need to repeatedly steer clear of any Taliban controversy, one wondered, was it fear of the obvious or a fact that for many of us is simply unacceptable?

Lunch had already been served, and as expected the dishwashing chore had been taken over by the dozens of women and young girls. Some things never change, whether its swat or Hasanabdal, or even Islamabad for that matter.

The head Granthi, Harindar Singh, who has been overseeing the Gurdawara for the last fifteen years, says that he has just received Rs50,000 from the Aquaf Department in Lahore.

“They have assured me on telephone that there is more once this sum is finished. All I have to do is call them”, says the Granthi.

These doctors have left behind flourishing clinics as have the engineers in the room, and they all think about whether their homes still remain or what has happened to their property. “The communication system has been cut down by the army, but sometimes in early morning we get a call from someone who has remained behind. It is hell there. Property worth millions, fields with harvesters, tractors, everything is there. We came with these clothes on our backs”, says Dr Suran Singh.

(to be continued)
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=175449