At Nankana Sahib in West Punjab of Pakistan, I was surprised to see a large concentration of Sikh community, none of whom are of Punjabi origin. The partition of Indian subcontinent in 1947 was founded on the concept of the ‘two-nation theory’ that Hindus and Muslims can henceforth never coexist even though for centuries they had lived side by side! The two party violence that triggered from the events of ‘Direct Action Day’ at Calcutta in 1946, by March 1947 turned the Sikhs into a ‘collateral damage’. Outcome was that the Sikhs and Hindus were cleansed from West Punjab and the Muslims from East Punjab! Sikhs, the PRIDE of Greater Punjab, were to be no more found in the lands of Punjab that became Pakistan. It’s in this background that at Nankana Sahib, I was surprised to see a large community of Pashtun Sikhs who have been increasingly migrating here since the last four decades.
I was fortunate to meet Bibi Taran Kaur, the first Pashtun Sikh migrant to Nankana Sahib in the year 1972. For generations, her family had been residing in the Tirah valley, close to the Afghanistan border. During the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War, in a PREJUDICED retaliation, the villagers surrounded Bibi Taran Kaur’s home, demanding conversion to Islam or death. The loyalty of Pashtun Sikhs towards their homeland was questioned even though they had no connection with the war being fought thousands of miles away. As a first act of conversion, the unshorn hair which proclaimed their belief in the Sikh faith had to be forcefully abandoned. A year later, having migrated to Nankana Sahib, the family re-embraced Sikhism. Today, there are over 200 Pashtun Sikh families residing in Nankana Sahib.
While it is heartening to see the Sikhs in Nankana Sahib, once again living with PRIDE but the past PREJUDICE serves a reminder that the seeds of ‘two-nation theory’ have over seven decades only fueled intolerance against one another. I hope in the present, communities across India and Pakistan can openly embrace each other as we have enough in the annals of history to remind us of the consequences of intolerance.
Photographed in Oct 2014, during the research for the book “LOST HERITAGE The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan”
