Pakistani Sikhs - After The Creation of Pakistan (1947)

After The Creation of Pakistan (1947)

Nationwide, there are no reliable numerical figures for Sikhs in the country. Estimates vary, the US Department of State estimated in 2007 that there were about 20,000. The largest Sikh population in Pakistan is found in Peshawar, in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where the Pashtun law of "nanawati" (protection) spared the scale of violence which had raged across the Indus River in Punjab. Despite the longstanding tensions between the Sikh and Muslim communities in the subcontinent, the Pashtuns were tolerant towards the religious minority of Sikhs. There are small pockets of Sikhs in Lahore and Nankana Sahib in Punjab. The (West) Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan were mostly emptied of their Sikh and Hindu population in the communal massacres of partition, with nearly all fleeing for India. These communities of refugees have had a major influence in the culture and economics of the Indian capital city of Delhi. Today, segments of the populations of East Punjab and Haryana states and Delhi in India can trace their ancestry back to towns and villages now in Pakistan, including current Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

There has been an influx in the population of Sikhs in Pakistan due to the turbulent civil war and conflicts that have ravaged neighboring Afghanistan. Afghanistan, like Pakistan, has had very small Sikh and Hindu populations. There has been a massive exodus of refugees from Afghanistan into Pakistan during the past 30 years of turmoil up to the reign of the Taliban and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Due to Pakistan's porous borders with Afghanistan, large numbers of Afghanistan's minority communities, based mainly around the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad have fled, and some Sikhs have joined their kinsmen in Peshawar and Lahore.