HOUSE OF WORSHIP: The Asamai temple, which had been looted and damaged during the 1990s, was reopened after the end of the Taliban regime. Hindus have now started visiting the temple. The new regime has spread the message of increased tolerance towards them and the Sikhs.

Sunita Luthra still remembers that August evening eight years ago. She was preparing supper for her husband, Nandlal, and two children in the family's modest home in Kabul. Gunfire rattled nearby and half-an-hour later witnesses arrived at the door with the news that the Luthras' fellow Hindu neighbour, Makan Lal, had been killed in his home, along with his wife and son. "We were so frightened," says Sunita, who was pregnant with a third child at that time. "We talked many times about leaving Afghanistan and going to India because it wasn't safe."

Thousands of the Luthras' Hindu and Sikh compatriots fled the city that summer, as the mujahideen entered the city and violence and looting enveloped the Afghan capital. Once numbering 20,000 families, the Hindu and Sikh community in Afghanistan plummeted to 500 families during the past nine years of first mujahideen mayhem and then the Taliban repression. The mujahideen and the Taliban both imprisoned Nandlal for several weeks each for failing to turn over his property to them, he says. They took away one of his two houses. Taliban guards whipped him 160 times in 1998. Nevertheless, the Luthras decided not to flee. "My husband is very stubborn. I knew he would never want to leave Kabul. He is brave, perhaps too brave," says Sunita with a laugh. "We stayed because this is our home, and we had a good life here in previous times," explains Nandlal, who owns five small shops in Kabul and Kandahar. "And we heard that the refugee life in India was full of misery and unemployment."

SNAPSHOTS OF THE PRESENT: Prakash, a studio owner and community leader, attends to a client. Many Hindus once formed Afghanistan's intellectual backbone. Now, most of them are shopkeepers.

Today, the Luthras are one among the only 10 Hindu families remaining in Kabul, joining 40 Sikh families in the capital. Five hundred Hindu and Sikh families have stayed in pockets of Afghanistan, in Jalalabad, Khost, Kandahar and other towns, struggling to maintain their culture and religious practices in a climate of instability and isolation. Along with other Afghan Hindu families, the Luthras recently observed Diwali in a subdued manner compared to the lively celebrations a decade ago that included televised broadcasts, large-scale prayers and parties. Several dozen Hindus, joined by some Sikh friends, lit candles in lieu of banned crackers, prayed and ate sweets to mark the return of Lord Ram to Ayodhya. "We carry on our traditions as best we can, but this is a time of great confusion and lack of leadership," says Nandlal. "We are very few, and we are all struggling to survive."

KEEPING THE FAITH: When for the first time in five years Sikhs gathered to openly celebrate Guru Nanak's birth anniversary in Kabul, the Alliance sent its minister of religious affairs, Atu Salim (right), to assure Hindus and Sikhs of religious tolerance

Hindu and Sikh cultures in Afghanistan resemble their Indian counterparts in many ways. Hindus celebrate Diwali, Holi and other religious occasions, and read about the Mahabharat and Ramayan mythologies as best they can. Because the only Hindu school was closed by the Taliban, the Luthras and other families read to their children from the Bhagwad Gita at home. A decade ago, during better times, many Afghan Hindus and Sikhs often travelled to India to visit holy places, including Varanasi. Presiding over his Kabul photostudio, Hindu community leader Prakash wistfully remembers the three times he travelled to Hardwar. He says he has been unable to leave the country since flights stopped in 1996, when the Taliban took control of Kabul. Arranged marriages have become something of a treasure hunt, as Hindu and Sikh boys plumb the dwindling supply of eligible brides at increasingly younger ages, says Prakash.

Telling differences remain between Hindu and Sikh cultures in Afghanistan and India. Over the past centuries, Afghan Hindus have put to rest the caste system. And, as they have been lumped together in the eyes of the Muslim majority in Afghanistan, the two communities have increasingly merged. "We are probably more tolerant and kinder than Hindus in India because we are used to being a minority," says Hansraj Jawa, who occasionally leads religious observances in place of a pandit. "The Sikhs are our brothers, and we often take part in each other's ceremonies and events." The strong, centuries-old Sikh and Hindu presence in Afghanistan was decimated during recent years as pandits, professionals and community leaders fled the country and the Taliban cracked down on non-Muslims.

Many Sikhs and Hindus had held senior positions at hospitals, as engineers and in government, and the community formed an important part of Afghanistan's intellectual backbone. Sikhs and Hindus had two representatives in Parliament until the early 1990s, when mujahideen and Taliban authorities banned them from holding official positions. Now, most Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan are shopkeepers. Of the nine thriving temples shared by Sikhs and Hindus a decade ago, all but one were looted, burned or damaged in the wars. Mujahideen commander Ahmed Shah Masood turned one temple into a military compound. Only a Sikh temple on a back street in Karte Parwan remained functional, and Sikhs and Hindus used it surreptitiously. "We went in secret, and observed our holy days in a very low-key fashion," says Jawa. "Mostly, we were left alone."

Besides the mass exodus of Hindus and Sikhs, the greatest challenge to the struggling non-Muslim communities in Afghanistan came early this year, when the Taliban ordered Hindus and Sikhs to wear yellow to distinguish them from Muslims, an edict chillingly evocative of Nazi measures more than half-a-century ago. The details of the order were outrageous. Men were told to wear yellow-dyed Afghan clothing. Women were to wear yellow burqas, according to the decree, in violation of Hindu and Sikh dress traditions. Non-Muslim shops and houses were to be defined by yellow cloth, prominently displayed. And Hindus and Sikhs were forbidden from living in proximity.

The last order stuck. The day after the edict, Taliban officials arrived at the home of Prakash, which he had shared with a Muslim family, and ordered him to leave within 12 hours. He took up boarding with a Sikh family, where he remains today. But as the Taliban decree sent shock waves through the Hindu and Sikh communities in Kabul and elsewhere in Afghanistan, it also galvanised them. Two days after the decree, Prakash and six other representatives went to the notorious Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice with a petition refusing to obey the order to wear yellow. It was a risky move and probably the most significant step of ordinary civilian resistance to the Taliban during its five-year rule. "We sat on the floor, and the ministry officials sat on chairs above us with armed guards all around," Prakash recalls. "We didn't know what would become of us." Surprisingly, the Taliban officials said they would consider the request. The reply came 10 months later. The Hindus and Sikhs were given three options, Prakash recalls: wear yellow, convert to Islam or leave the country.