Afghan Hindus
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Afghan Hindus
Hinduism in Afghanistan is practiced by a tiny minority of Afghans, believed to be about 30-40 individuals as of 2021, who live mostly in the cities of Kabul and Jalalabad. Afghan Hindus are ethnically Pashtun, Hindkowan (Hindki), Punjabi, or Sindhi and primarily speak Pashto, Hindko, Punjabi, Dari, and Hindustani (Urdu-Hindi). Before the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, the Afghan people were multi-religious. Religious persecution, discrimination, and forced conversion of Hindus perpetrated by Muslims has caused the Afghan Hindus, along with Buddhist and Sikh population, to dwindle from Afghanistan. During the 1970s, the Afghan Hindu population was estimated to number between 80,000 and 280,000, or 0.7% to 2.5% of the national population at the time. However, the population rapidly declined thereafter due to the Afghan wars along with continued persecution, discrimination and forced conversion. Background The Indo-Aryan inhabitants of the region, including Pashayi and ...
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Hindus
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent. The term ''"Hindu"'' traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the Sanskrit name ''Sindhu'' (सिन्धु ), referring to the river Indus. The Greek cognates of the same terms are "''Indus''" (for the river) and "''India''" (for the land of the river). The term "''Hindu''" also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Indus River, Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic peoples, Turkic or Muslims. Hindoo is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today is considered derogatory. The historical development of Hindu self-i ...
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Forced Conversion
Forced conversion is the adoption of a different religion or the adoption of irreligion under duress. Someone who has been forced to convert to a different religion or irreligion may continue, covertly, to adhere to the beliefs and practices which were originally held, while outwardly behaving as a convert. Crypto-Jews, crypto-Christians, crypto-Muslims and crypto-Pagans are historical examples of the latter. Religion and power In general, anthropologists have shown that the relationship between religion and politics is complex, especially when viewed over the expanse of human history.Firth, Raymond (1981Spiritual Aroma: Religion and Politics ''American Anthropologist'', New Series, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 582–601 While religious leaders and the state generally have different aims, both are concerned with power and order; both use reason and emotion to motivate behavior. Throughout history, leaders of religious and political institutions have cooperated, opposed one another, and ...
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Religious Discrimination
Religious discrimination is treating a person or group differently because of the particular beliefs which they hold about a religion. This includes instances when adherents of different religions, denominations or non-religions are treated unequally due to their particular beliefs, either by the law or in institutional settings, such as employment or housing. Religious discrimination is related to religious persecution, the most extreme forms of which would include instances in which people have been executed for beliefs which have been perceived to be heretical. Laws that only carry light punishments are described as ''mild forms of religious persecution'' or ''religious discrimination''. In recent years, the term religionism has also been used, but "religious discrimination" remains the more widely used term. Even in societies where freedom of religion is a constitutional right, adherents of minority religions sometimes voice their concerns about religious discrimination a ...
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Religious Persecution
Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religion, religious beliefs or affiliations or their irreligion, lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history. Moreover, because a person's religion often determines their sense of morality, worldview, self-image, attitudes towards others, and overall personal identity to a significant extent, religious differences can be significant cultural, personal, and social factors. Religious persecution may be triggered by religious prejudice, bigotry (i.e. when members of a dominant group denigrate religions other than their own) or it may be triggered by the state when it views a particular religious group as a threat to its interests or security. At a societal level, the dehumanization of a particular religious group may readily lead to violence or other forms of p ...
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Islamic Conquest Of Afghanistan
The Muslim conquests of Afghanistan began during the Muslim conquest of Persia as the Arab Muslims migrated eastwards to Greater Khorasan, Khorasan, Sistan and Transoxiana. Fifteen years after the Battle of Nahāvand in 642 AD, they controlled all Sassanid Empire, Sasanian domains except in Afghanistan. Fuller Islamization was not achieved until the period between 10th and 12th centuries under Ghaznavid and Ghurid dynasty's rule who patronized Muslim religious institutions. Greater Khorasan, Khorasan and Sistan, where Zoroastrianism was well-established, were conquered. The Arabs had begun to move towards the lands east of Persia and in 652 AD they captured the city of Herat, establishing an Arab governor there.''Historic Cities of the Islamic World'', ed. C.E. Bosworth, (Brill, 2007), 153. The Muslim frontier in modern Afghanistan had become stabilized after the first century of Hijri calendar as the relative importance of the Afghan areas diminished. From historical evidence, ...
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Sindhi Hindus
Sindhi Hindus are Sindhis who follow the Hindu religion, whose origins lie in the Sindh region and spread across modern-day India and Pakistani Sindh province. After the Partition of India in 1947, many Sindhi Hindus were among those who fled from Pakistan to the dominion of India, in what was a wholesale exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations in some areas. Some later emigrated from the subcontinent and settled in other parts of the world. According to the 2017 census, there are 3.35 million Sindhi Hindus residing within the Sindh province of Pakistan with major population centers being Mirpur Khas Division and Hyderabad Division that combined account for more than 2 million of them. Meanwhile, the 2011 census listed 1.74 million speakers of Sindhi in India, a number that does not include Sindhi Hindus who no longer speak the Sindhi language. The vast majority of Sindhi Hindus living in India belong to the Lohana ''jāti'', which includes the sub-groups of Amil and Bh ...
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Punjabi Hindus
Punjabi Hindus are adherents of Hinduism who identify linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Punjabis. While Punjabi Hindus are mostly found in the Indian state of Punjab today, many have ancestry from the greater Punjab region, an area that was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947. History Ancient The Punjabi people first practiced proto-Hinduism, the oldest recorded religion in the Punjab region. The historical Vedic religion constituted the religious ideas and practices in the Punjab during the Vedic period (1500–500 BCE), centered primarily in the worship of Indra. The bulk of the Rigveda was composed in the Punjab region between circa 1500 and 1200 BCE, while later Vedic scriptures were composed more eastwards, between the Yamuna and Ganges rivers. An ancient Indian law book called the Manusmriti, developed by Brahmin Hindu priests, shaped Punjabi religious life from 200 BCE onward. British colonial era Prominent Indian nationalists f ...
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Hindkowan
Hindkowans (lit. "Indian-speakers"), also known as the Hindki, is a contemporary designation for speakers of Indo-Aryan languages who live among the neighbouring Pashtuns, particularly the speakers of various Hindko dialects of Lahnda. The origins of the term refer merely to "Indian speaking" people (i.e. speakers of Indo-Aryan languages) rather than to any particular ethnic group. The term is not only applied to several forms of "Northern Lahnda" but also to the Saraiki dialects of the districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Mianwali, and Dera Ismail Khan, which border the southern Pashto-speaking areas. There is also a small diaspora in Afghanistan, which includes members of the Sikh and Hindu community who became established there during the Sikh Empire in the first half of the 19th century. Most of them have emigrated since the rise of the Taliban, and the total population of Sikhs, Hindko-speaking or not, was estimated at around 300 families (as of 2018). They are commonly know ...
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Pashtuns
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically referred to as Afghans () or xbc, αβγανο () until the 1970s, when the term's meaning officially evolved into that of a demonym for all residents of Afghanistan, including those outside of the Pashtun ethnicity. The group's native language is Pashto, an Iranian language in the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Additionally, Dari Persian serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan while those in the Indian subcontinent speak Urdu and Hindi (see Hindustani language) as their second language. Pashtuns are the 26th-largest ethnic group in the world, and the largest segmentary lineage society; there are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans with a variety of origin theories. The total popul ...
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Jalalabad
Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jalalabad is located at the junction of the Kabul River and the Kunar River in a plateau to the south of the Hindu Kush mountains. It is linked by the Kabul-Jalalabad Road to the west and Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, to the east through Torkham and the Khyber Pass. Jalalabad is a leading center of social and trade activity because of its proximity with the Torkham border checkpoint and border crossing, away. Major industries include papermaking, as well as agricultural products including oranges, lemon, rice, and sugarcane, helped by its warm climate. It hosts Afghanistan's second largest educational institute, Nangarhar University. For centuries the city has been favored by Afghan kings and it is a cultural significance in Afg ...
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Kabul
Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. According to late 2022 estimates, the population of Kabul was 13.5 million people. In contemporary times, the city has served as Afghanistan's political, cultural, and economical centre, and rapid urbanisation has made Kabul the 75th-largest city in the world and the country's primate city. The modern-day city of Kabul is located high up in a narrow valley between the Hindu Kush, and is bounded by the Kabul River. At an elevation of , it is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Located at a crossroads in Asia—roughly halfway between Istanbul, Turkey, in the west and Hanoi, Vietnam, in the east—it is situated in a stra ...
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