Trav­eller and doc­u­men­tal­ist Gur­preet Singh Anand re­views In­der­jeet Singh’s book, “Afghan Hin­dus and Sikhs –His­tory of a Thou­sand Years” and tells about this metic­u­lously crafted book to un­der­stand the mys­tery of the growth of civ­i­liza­tions in the cra­dle of Afghanistan.

It is not very of­ten that some­one sits down to com­pile his­tory of its peo­ple that are fast de­cay­ing as In­der­jeet Singh has as­sid­u­ously com­piled in the last cou­ple of years. The re­sult is a land­mark book “Afghan Hin­dus and Sikhs A His­tory of a Thou­sand Years, “doc­u­ment­ing preva­lence of these van­ish­ing peo­ple whose roots go deeper into the sands and caul­dron of that pit of world’s civil­i­sa­tions -Afghanistan.

Though the au­thor has col­lated much of the his­tory from pub­lished works of trav­els through or into Afghanistan, what makes this a must buy is the doc­u­men­ta­tion of hith­erto un­known places.

The tra­vails of Hin­dus and Sikhs in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury up­heavals caused post the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Afghanistan is one of the sig­nif­i­cant as­pects. As their num­ber dwin­dles fur­ther from thou­sands to a cou­ple of hun­dred only, some­one was needed to record and pre­serve their sto­ries.

As they mi­grate from war-rav­aged Afghanistan to all parts of the globe, their sto­ries would fiz­zle out with time and it is re­mark­able that In­der­jeet Singh has chron­i­cled them for pos­ter­ity.

His is a painstak­ing ef­fort to put on record preva­lence of these two com­mu­ni­ties and their places of wor­ship as also the role of Afghanistan in In­di­a’s free­dom move­ment.

How­ever I wish the au­thor had also in­cluded the role of Sikhs in Afghanistan in the Kuka move­ment and of the Hindu and Sikh mer­chants in the es­cape of leg­endary Sub­hash Chan­der Bose from Cal­cutta to Ger­many via Afghanistan where Bose stayed for cou­ple of days prior to his on­ward jour­ney to Moscow and then to Berlin.

The au­thor men­tions dharamsha­las of Hindu mer­chants in sev­eral places in Kho­rasan in­clud­ing in Bukhara which this re­viewer too has vis­ited dur­ing the course of his trav­els.

There is a very im­por­tant Dharamshal in Baku that ex­ists to this day in pre­sent day Azer­bei­jan which has on its walls “Mool Man­tar” –the first stanza from Guru Granth Sahib, writ­ten in Gur­mukhi script point­ing to the pres­ence of Shikarpuri mer­chants or Nanakpan­this there.

“As they mi­grate from war-rav­aged Afghanistan to all parts of the globe, their sto­ries would fiz­zle out with time and it is re­mark­able that In­der­jeet Singh has chron­i­cled them for pos­ter­ity”.

This book is a de­light for all those his­tory lovers and an­thro­pol­o­gists seek­ing roots be­yond pre­sent writ­ten works.  I also wish the au­thor had writ­ten about the hun­dreds of thou­sands of pris­on­ers of Timur the Lame and Ahmed­shah Ab­dali taken to Afghanistan. They left their marks on the mag­nif­i­cent build­ings of Samarkand where in Reg­is­tan Square one finds in geo­met­ri­cal blue tile work ‘sawastikas’ in the lofty square. These pris­on­ers con­tin­ued to live and marry and even­tu­ally co-ex­isted with the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

How Hin­dus were taken pris­on­ers and as­sim­i­lated with the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion dawned on me one af­ter­noon while I was on a visit to Hakim-at-Ter­mizi, one of the fa­mous Sufi sain­t’s tombs in Ter­mez, Uzbek­istan. A man came run­ning and as I was with a lo­cal guide; he propped his arm next to mine and told me ‘I am his brother!’

When asked how, he told in Uzbek, that our fea­tures are same, our colour is same and his great great-grand fa­thers were brought from the Pun­jab by Timur as slaves for con­struc­tion of palaces and tombs!

“AFGHAN HIN­DUS AND SIKHS HIS­TORY OF A THOU­SAND YEARS 270 pages, Price Rs. 350, Pub­lished by Read­o­ma­nia. Avail­able on Ama­zon.”

And then he told me through the guide that there is a place near Samarkand called Panj-Ab. I re­turned two days later to dis­cover the place and visit the mosque there whose pre­sent moulvi showed me a video he had made of his grand-fa­ther giv­ing de­tails how all the peo­ple in that lo­cal­ity were rounded up by Timur and brought to his birth­place! In­cred­i­ble! These sto­ries of in­va­sion and slav­ery have fas­ci­nat­ing tales.

In­der­jeet Singh has also made a ref­er­ence to the won­der­ful doc­u­men­tary on the sub­ject by Lon­don-based Prit­pal Singh.

In­der­jeet Singh has brought a book that makes his­tory read­able and in­ter­est­ing.