Apart from the Hindkowans, the Indo-Aryan native inhabitants of the region, including Pashayi and Nuristanis, were also known to be followers of a sect of Ancient Hinduism, mixed with tribal cultural identities.

"[16]Gandhara, a region encompassing the South-east of Afghanistan, was also a center of Hinduism and Buddhism since the time of the Vedic Period (c. 1500 – c. 1200 BCE).

[17][18] [19] Later forms of Hinduism were also prevalent in this south-eastern region of the country during the Turk shahis, with Khair Khaneh, a Brahmanical temple being excavated in Kabul and a statue of Gardez Ganesha being found in Paktia province.

[25][26][27] According to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), the number of Hindus currently living in Afghanistan has steadily declined over the years.

[28] By roughly 2000–1500 BCE, Indo-Aryan inhabitants of the region (mainly in the eastern parts of present-day Afghanistan) were adherents of Hinduism.

Most historians maintain that Afghanistan was inhabited by ancient Arians followed by the Achaemenid before the arrival of Alexander the Great and his Greek army in 330 BC.

In 305 BCE, the Seleucid Empire lost control of the territory south of the Hindu Kush to the Indian Emperor "Sandrocottus" as a result of the Seleucid-Mauryan War.

Alexander took these away from the Arians and established settlements of his own, but Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus (Chandragupta), upon terms of intermarriage and of receiving in exchange 500 elephants.

[35] However, they did not mention much about Hinduism although Song Yun did state that the Hephthalite rulers did not recognize Buddhism but "preached pseudo gods and killed animals for their meat".

The General of the Arab army "broke of a hand of the idol and plucked out the rubies which were its eyes in order to persuade the Marzbān of Sīstān of the god's worthlessness.

Hence, many contemporary ethnic groups in Afghanistan, including the Pashtuns, Kalash, Pashayi, Nuristanis and Hindkowans continued to practice Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism.

[40] Willem Vogelsang in his 2002 book writes: "During the 8th and 9th centuries AD the eastern terroritries of modern Afghanistan were still in the hands of non-Muslim rulers.

Brill and Farishta have recorded the introduction of Islam to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan to the conquests of and Mahmud: The Arabs advanced through Sistan and conquered Sindh early in the eighth century.

Elsewhere however their incursions were no more than temporary, and it was not until the rise of the Saffarid dynasty in the ninth century that the frontiers of Islam effectively reached Ghazni and Kabul.

He expelled the Hindus from Gandhara, made no fewer than seventeen raids into northwestern India and succeeded in conquering territory stretching from the Caspian Sea to Varanasi.

[49] He encouraged mass conversions to Islam, of Indians as well as Afghans, looted Hindu temples and carried off immense booty, earning for himself, depending on the viewpoint of the observer, the titles of 'Image-breaker' or 'scourge of India'.

The Indian soldiers, presumably Hindus, who were one of the components of the army with their commander called sipahsalar-i-Hinduwan lived in their quarter of Ghazna practicing their own religion.

[51] The renowned 14th-century Moroccan Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta remarked that the Hindu Kush meant the "slayer of Indians", because slaves brought from India who had to pass through there died in large numbers due to the extreme cold and quantity of snow.

The 2002 loya jirga had two seats reserved for Hindus[55] and former President Hamid Karzai's economic advisor, Sham Lal Bhatija was an Afghan Hindu.

In the United States, Abraham Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, compared the decree to the practices of Nazi Germany, where Jews were required to wear labels identifying them as such.

[a] With a wide range of population approximations in the absence of official census data and with much of the community concentrated in the provinces of Kabul, Nangarhar, Ghazni, and Kandahar, the Afghan Hindu population was estimated to be between 80,000 and 280,000 in the 1970s,[4][70][b][71][72][c] as per estimates by historian Inderjeet Singh, Ehsan Shayegan with the Porsesh Research and Studies Organisation and Rawail Singh, an Afghan Sikh civil rights activist.

[72] Many of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs have been settled in Germany, France, United States, Australia, India, Belgium, the Netherlands and other nations.