Prit­pal Singh painfully shares per­sonal mem­o­ries of the Sikh lead­er­ship who were all killed in the re­cent sui­cide bomb at­tack in Jalal­abad. This is his trib­ute to the gi­ant would-be Mem­ber Par­lia­ment of the Afghan Par­lia­ment -Aw­tar Singh Khalsa. His rolled-up Afghan tur­ban is an un­miss­able and un­for­get­table sight.

In Kabul, I had the op­por­tu­nity to in­ter­act with Aw­tar Singh Khalsa, who was known as Mas­ter-ji within our com­mu­nity. Af­ter the fall of Dr Na­jib’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, he was the head teacher at a school run within the Karte Par­wan Gur­d­wara com­pound in Kabul be­cause our chil­dren stopped at­tend­ing the state-run schools as soon as the civil war reached the cap­i­tal.

He told me that those who had stayed back in Afghanistan felt aban­doned by the those who had left for the west es­pe­cially the Afghan Sikhs and Hin­dus liv­ing in the US, UK and Ger­many. He there­fore saw it as his per­sonal ded­i­ca­tion to stay back and at­tend to the re­main­ing fam­i­lies and Sikh in­sti­tu­tions.

His can­di­dacy for Afghanistan’s elec­tions drew wide­spread at­ten­tion across the coun­try and in the Sikh Di­as­pora. It was cel­e­brated as a sign of the mi­nor­ity group’s re­silience and ded­i­ca­tion to Afghanistan de­spite the most dif­fi­cult times.

Sadly, the en­emy could not tol­er­ate Khal­sa’s vi­sion of an in­clu­sive, de­mo­c­ra­tic and pro­gres­sive Afghanistan, prob­a­bly that is why they killed him.

 Read Also: Sikh na­tion ral­lies for Afghan Sikhs, Akalis meet en­voy in Delhi

 Read Also: Afghan Sikhs killed, Sikhs protest, seek an­swers from Mus­lim world