PESHAWAR: Roadside iftars, where devout Muslims gather at sunset to break their fast in the holy month of Ramadan, are a common sight in Pakistan. But there was something different about the gathering in the northwestern city of Peshawar this Thursday: it was being hosted by minority Sikhs.
For ten years, Peshawar’s Sikh community, estimated to number around 8,000, has arranged iftar meals for Muslims throughout Ramadan.
“Exactly ten years ago, I was sitting at my clinic in the month of Ramadan and thought how can I serve fasting Muslims,” community leader Dr. Jatinder Singh told Arab News on Thursday evening before the iftar meal commenced. “I started a small iftar party at my medical store, serving cold drinks, dates and juices to a few Muslims.”
Since then, the gathering has grown bigger and become a tradition, with Sikh community leaders now serving the sunset meal each year to hundreds of Muslims in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
On Thursday, too, Sikh volunteers in tightly-wound, colorful turban – the most conspicuous emblem of the Sikh faith — served cold drinks, fruits, and cooked food to long lines of Muslims sitting on colorful plastic floor mats on the side of the road.

Balbir Singh, a young volunteer with the Pakistan Sikh Council who has arranged iftar gatherings outside Peshawar’s hospitals, central jail, orphanages, and schools, said the purpose of hosting the meals was to promote a feeling of mutual understanding and harmony.
“We feel satisfaction serving Muslims in this month,” he said. “This will help beat intolerance and hatred.”
The ‘hatred’ he referred to involves a string of recent ‘targeted killings’ of Sikhs in the province that have unleashed fear and fury among the community. Last year, grocery store owner and rights activist Charanjeet Singh’s was killed at his shop by unidentified gunmen in what police described as the tenth such killing since 2014.
In 2016, in another high-profile case, Soran Singh, a lawmaker from the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, was shot dead near Peshawar in an attack claimed by Pakistani Taliban insurgents.

While violence against religious minorities, particularly Christian and Shia Muslims, has been a painfully familiar story in Pakistan, Sikhs have long been considered one of the country’s most protected minorities. In Peshawar, they have lived peacefully among Muslims for over 250 years, working mostly as traditional healers, and running pharmacies and cosmetics and clothing stores.
But due to the new spate of killings in the last five years, community leaders say more than sixty percent of Peshawar’s 30,000 Sikhs had left for other parts of Pakistan or migrated to neighboring India.

Dr. Jatinder Singh admitted that authorities in Peshawar had warned the community to remain vigilant while arranging the iftar gatherings in light of incidents of violence against the community.
Pakistan is considered the birthplace of the Sikh religion. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born in the small village of Nankana Sahib near the eastern city of Lahore in 1469. Today, thousands of Sikhs from around the world visit the area for pilgrimage. And in the country’s northwest, Sikhs have a particularly glorious history.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the leader of the Sikh Empire, defeated the majority ethnic Pashtun tribesmen of the region in the Battle of Nowshera in 1823. His commander-in-chief, Hari Singh Nalwa, then moved thousands of Sikhs from Punjab to Peshawar and its surrounding areas in what is present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.
Since then, according to community estimates, at least 500 Sikh families have lived in Peshawar and its surrounding northwestern regions. And they would continue to do so, Dr. Jatinder said, living in harmony with Muslims and serving them in Ramadan despite the security threats.
“You know the old saying,” the doctor said as he poured water into a jug to pass on to a Muslim friend. “Love heals everything.”