Homeless in Their Homeland: The Story of Sikhs Displaced in KP

Laiba Hussan

Peshawar: Jind Kaur, along with her children — twin sons aged one and a daughter aged two — was forced to flee her home in 2006. It was a time when the Sikh community was facing escalated militant attacks and religious intolerance across Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), then known as NWFP.

Kaur’s husband, who owned a goods shop and some property in the Khyber district, had been murdered by the extremist groups in the region. She subsequently sought refuge in Peshawar, where she has been making a living as a domestic worker.

There has been no official survey to determine the number of Sikhs living in KP. According to Baba Garpal Singh, a representative for the Sikh community, a large number of families resided in the northwestern province.

Sikh families could be found in various districts, including Khyber, Orakzai, and Kurram. In fact, over 1,000 families called Khyber their “home” before it was merged with KP in 2018. Besides, some 450 families lived in Kurram and 250 in Orakzai.

Due to worsening law and order situation, many families were forced to leave their homes. Some sought refuge in Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh in Peshawar while others relocated to Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hassan Abdal in the Attock district of Punjab, where reportedly 60,000 Sikhs are living.

The Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (PSGPC) and the Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh Committee had stepped in to oversee the relocation efforts.

The plight of women

Sarjeet Kaur, who washes dishes and does cleaning work in a gurdwara in Peshawar (KP’s capital) to support her two sons, migrated to Kurram in the face of extremism and violence against Sikhs in 2009.

There, she married Dayal Singh. They lived with their four children in a two-room rented house. All went well until tragedy struck.

“I dropped my sons to a nearby school for the [Sikh] community and then I called my husband to inform him I was going to pay the electricity bill,” she says. “The store where I was going to pay the bill was near my husband’s shop.”

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Upon arriving, Sarjeet saw her husband’s lifeless body in a pool of blood. Grief overwhelmed her; she cried and shouted for help, but no one came near them.

“I still don’t know the reason behind my husband’s killing,” says Sarjeet. “If we are not safe even in Peshawar, where should we go?”

Despite months having passed since Dayal was murdered in broad daylight, his culprits remain untraced, and the family has not yet received any compensation from the state. With virtually no source of income to take care of her four children and support their education, Sarjeet managed to find work at the Jogan Shah Gurdwara.

But even with all the support her community provides her, the trauma of her husband’s brutal killing, its emotional toll on her children, and the financial constraints for Sarjeet are burdens too heavy for any lone woman and her young family to lead a normal life.

Forced displacement

A large number of Sikhs had businesses in Peshawar’s Karkhano market and Dabgari Gardens for more than 20 years, but targeted killings forced them to move to other provinces, including Punjab, in hopes for safety.

According to Sarjeet, after the killing of her brother and her husband, her parents and other family members left KP and shifted to Punjab. “But I don’t have enough resources to shift to Punjab so I am staying here in fear, isolated with my kids.”

Rising extremism, terror attacks, and target killings in KP, especially against minorities, have forced religious communities within the provinces to relocate.

According to estimates provided by a Sikh rights campaigner, Radesh Singh Tony, a total of 30 members of his community have been killed in targeted attacks since 2013, while some 70 per cent (30,000) of the province’s Sikh population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad.

The first Sikh casualty this year was herbalist Dayal Singh who on, March 31, was shot dead by unidentified assailants in his Dir Colony shop in Peshawar.

Continuing targeted killings

A year prior to Dayal’s target killing, on May 15, his relatives Ranjit — who was Sarjeet’s brother — and Guljit Singh were also murdered in a similar manner inside their spice shop at Batta Tal Chowk.

The spate of killings crashed many of her family members’ small but once-flourishing businesses, and forced them to leave Peshawar for safer parts of the country.

Arinder Singh from Peshawar also lost a brother, Manmohan Singh, in the second targeted killing of a Sikh in Peshawar this year. Per Arinder’s account, on the evening of June 24, Manmohan was gunned down by unidentified motorcyclists outside his cosmetics shop in the Kakshal neighborhood.

“He was closing shop when some men in helmets on a motorcycle pulled up to him,” says Arinder. “They shot him and fled. I got a call from home that my brother had been shot outside his shop and to hurry home.”

Like Sarjeet, Arinder also serves at the gurdwara and is sometimes aided by his community to take care of his ageing.

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“My father is too old to even run his small shop but he has no choice,” he says. “We reported the killing when it happened, but till date we have not been able to find anything.”

The Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), a terrorist group which has carried out targeted attacks against religious minorities across Pakistan, took responsibility for Manmohan’s murder.

A day before Manmohan’s murder, another Sikh shopkeeper, Tarlog Singh, sustained a gunshot wound in his leg in an attempted target killing in the same neighborhood.

At least one other Sikh has been killed this year. On May 6, Sardar Singh was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Lahore’s residential area of Nawab Town — an area regarded by many as a stronghold for an extremist party.

According to Garpal Singh, thousands of Sikh families lived in the tribal areas of KP. However, during the wave of extremism in 2009, several Sikhs were forced to relocate after the extremists broke into their homes demanding extortion, desecrating their religious books, and misbehaving with women.

Consequently, they moved to Peshawar, Nankana Sahib, Hassan Abdal, Faisalabad, Karachi, and Sargodha. Around 600 families settled in Peshawar, totalling approximately 15,000 individuals.

Later, the Sikh leaders compiled lists of displaced families and handed them over to the local administration and the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA). “Only 30 out of the more than 400 families that relocated from Tirah have been facilitated.”

Longing for ‘home’

A few Sikh families have returned to the tribal areas in KP. Some of them resumed their businesses, but the situation is worsening again. Garpal Singh says the fear has seeped into everyday life because Sikhs have been targeted for a long time now.

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“Our Sikh families want to return to their ancestral land, we want our homes back, historic gurdwaras restored so that we can perform our religious rites,” he says.

“Our historical gurdwaras are in Ibrahimzai, Malana and Malikhel areas of Orakzai and Kurram.”

The women who have lost their husbands to violence demand justice from the government and want their children to go to school without any fear and to enjoy their childhood like other children.

Sarjeet and Jind lament that they feel “caged” as they can’t go out into the markets with their children. “Our kids play in this deserted street and we fear for their safety and stand at our doors keeping eyes on them.”

All the information provided in this report is the sole responsibility of the reporter.