“there were plenty of indians in Afghanistan, though the genetic impact is far lower than you would expect based on the texts of al-biruni (i think this is because so many were slaves and so did not replace themselves).”

kings dont issue coins and sculpt statues honoring gods of the slaves. obviously a lot of free population was hindu/buddhist.

there is significant AASI component in pashtuns. where is it coming from? the simplest explanation is that it is coming from a bedrock indic population that they absorbed as they spread across afg.

if i were to take a guess, i would say that the majority of afg population in antiquity, from the time of mauryan empire down to the period of indo-greek kingdoms was indic, both in blood as well as in religious’ traditions. up to the time of hindu-shahi kingdom things probably changed. rise of arab, samanid and ghazanavid empires must have set in motion large scale population movement, that may have changed the overall character of afg population. it was in this period E-iranian component probably become dominant.

so, there is some justification in the claim that afg was hindu at some point of time in history.

@Mareez
RV’s core was almost certainly composed on the steppe, long before there were ārya in what we now call Afghanistan. Though as oral compositions go, there were a lot of accretions into RV as well. SV / YV are more Greater Punjab and their language already has a fair bit of Prakritization of OIA. grabh- > grah- etc

I actually think it is better to understand RV content as an Indo-Iranian (or even IE) canon as opposed to just Indic branch related. It’s just that the conservatism of the Indic branch has kept the traditional canon, but parts of it would have been recognisable to even the C Asians who hadn’t yet split off into those branches.

Afghanistan was never Hindu, but whatever it was contributed a lot to modern-day Hinduism of the NW of the Indian subcontinent.

The ethnic cleansing that happened of non-Muslims with Partition means that practically nothing of this survives in Pakistan and only pockets in India’s north. Hinduism is the last refuge of the C Asian pagan 🙂

hazara are shia and the rest are hanafi sunni. deobandi comes out of hanafi sunni, though it’s different/more extreme/more rationalist

you seem to be making a distinction between afghan people and indian people. but whoever was living in afg at a certain point of time was afghan, wasn’t it?

this is retarded. the dominant group in Afghanistan was east Iranian. later turks joined them.

there were greeks, arabs, and mongols, periodically. but Afghanistan wasn’t greek arab or mongol.

there were plenty of indians in Afghanistan, though the genetic impact is far lower than you would expect based on the texts of al-biruni (i think this is because so many were slaves and so did not replace themselves). this means indian cultural influences were present in Afghanistan. first, Hinduism. later, Buddhism. (the two perhaps at the same time) even deobandi Islam is really indian!

this doesn’t mean that afghan culture is necessarily hindu or deobandi.

i am responding to idiotic people opining “well ackchually Afghanistan was hindu before it was Muslim.” no it wasn’t. it was a mix of pagan, zoroastrian, Buddhist, and hindu. the zoroastrian part was probably the most dominant if i had to bet…like hinduism it was mostly an oral religion so gets underweighted in textual sources.

now, you might say these people are marginal, but they’re not. and unfortunately when marginal people aren’t rebutted their arguments spread. so i am responding on this blog post to draw a line in the sand.

Presumably, you are referring to the Islam of the Taliban. Are there are other sects or schools of Islam present in Afghanistan that are subordinate, but have meaningful numbers of local adherents?

” crazy pashtun idiots would be running amok in our cities firing guns in the air”

Wasnt that true of India’s Kashmir and N-East as well. Dont remember anyone arguing we are better off without them.

“Yes but we would have more people with beautiful NW features ”

…clad in burka. what a waste.

“the hindu shahi were probably indian in origin. there were plenty of indians in Afghanistan before and after Islam”

you seem to be making a distinction between afghan people and indian people. but whoever was living in afg at a certain point of time was afghan, wasn’t it?

in fact we have reasons to believe that afg was deeply indic in character in antiquity. pashtuns are recent migrants to afg. their expansion into eastern afg and peshawar valley took place as late as babar’s times. babar noted their colonization of their current habitat in his autobiography. pashtun ethnogenesis itself took place post turkish conquest of afg.

JDsinh has already posted an excellent article on hinduism in afg, so not much remains to be said. just couple of points –

if hindu-shahi royalty were hindu, a good reason to believe the generation population was hindu too. masses take their cue regarding religion from the elites.

and indo-greek kings of bactria of were certainly NOT indian in origin. so if Agathocles of Bactria issued coins honoring krishna and balarama, i have strong reasons to believe that these were deities worshipped by general population, and the king was trying to win over the population by honoring gods of the masses.

you article should have been properly titled – pashtuns/tajiks/hazaras were never hindu.

Yes but we would have more people with beautiful NW features 😉