An Afghan Sikh family of 13 has found refuge in the diaspora community on Long Island.
Amandeep Singh, 12, stands with his family in the communal room where"langar," food served after temple services, is provided at Guru Nanak Darbar of Long Island, a Sikh gurdwara, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Hicksville, N.Y. Their Afghan Sikh family of 13 has found refuge in the diaspora community on Long Island where the Sikh community is helping family members obtain work permits, housing, healthcare and find schools for the children.
Sikhs and Hindus make up only a tiny fraction of the population of Afghanistan, which is almost entirely Muslim. Under the Taliban in the late 1990s, they were asked to identify themselves by wearing yellow armbands or badges, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and in recent years they have been repeatedly targeted by extremists.
Soni, now 27, still has fresh memories of the 2020 gurdwara attack that ultimately drove the family from the country. When the assailants stormed the prayer hall early that morning, he was in the next room at the Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib, where his father was the chief granthi, or ceremonial reader of the Sikh sacred text.He saw men running into the temple with shoes, something that is prohibited.
Paramjit Singh Bedi, a longtime community leader who moved to the United States in 1984 and was instrumental in bringing them over, is now hoping to help them get housing, work permits and medical insurance, and the children enrolled in school. Bathija said he sees the Hindu and Sikh communities as “the same,” and they visit each other's places of worship and celebrate together Diwali, the festival of lights.Sikhs and Hindus are not recent migrants to Afghanistan but have hundreds of years of history there. Sikh texts speak of a time when Guru Nanak, the religion’s founder, visited Afghanistan in the 1500s.
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