Opinion: India can host the Taliban but not its misogyny

When women journalists were barred from attending the visiting Afghan minister’s press conference in Delhi this week, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government unwittingly allowed the Taliban to import its gender apartheid onto Indian soil.
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi with India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. They are shaking hands and posing for a photo
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi with India's External Affairs Minister S JaishankarX / Hafiz Zia Ahmad
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India’s decision to ramp up ties with Afghanistan and host the Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi may make sense as a strategic decision. Delhi wants a seat at Kabul’s geopolitical table to counter Pakistan’s influence and safeguard our regional interests.

After the US’ tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, India’s decades-long investment and humanitarian legacy in Kabul became vulnerable. We ceded strategic space to Pakistan, which has long strived to exercise control over Afghanistan, and to China, which is cementing its presence through the Belt and Road Initiative and mineral investments. So, India cosying up to Afghanistan to reclaim the space is understandable.

But that pragmatic diplomacy should not come at the cost of diluting India’s democratic and gender equality ethos. India can host the Taliban but not its misogyny. When women journalists were barred from attending the visiting Afghan minister’s press conference in Delhi this week, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government unwittingly allowed the Taliban to import its gender apartheid onto Indian soil.

I returned from Afghanistan barely a day ago. For two weeks, I travelled through a country where the erasure of women from public life is frightening. The Taliban denies education to girls beyond the sixth grade. Women have disappeared from government offices, police, and the judiciary in Afghanistan. Public parks and gyms are no-go zones. Running a beauty salon could lead to imprisonment or other harsh punishment. 

Women are not allowed to travel without a male guardian. Those few women journalists who remain in the country work under duress. They are forced to cover their faces and are banned from covering press conferences and interviewing Taliban officials. Having just returned from that suffocating silence, I could almost hear its faint echo in Delhi. To see the Taliban planting even a tiny seed of that gender apartheid in India, the world’s largest democracy, is deeply troubling.

India has always prided itself on being a country where women lead in politics, business and media. Our women journalists are at the top of their game as chief editors, global columnists, and war reporters. We had a woman prime minister decades ago and a woman foreign minister as recently as Sushma Swaraj, who represented India on the world stage.

Would Afghanistan have refused to engage with India if our foreign minister were a woman? Would Muttaqi have refused to sit across a table with Ms Swaraj in the same room? The answer, of course, is no. The Taliban would have conveniently relinquished its misogyny to befriend India. That is why this episode of gender discrimination does not end with blame games or bureaucratic whataboutery. This requires an unequivocal stand by India.

The Ministry of External Affairs has suggested that the press list was managed by Afghan officials and that it had no role in it. But that explanation does not absolve India of responsibility. The press conference took place in the Indian capital, under India’s watch. It would be too naïve even to suggest that Indian officials did not know about the exclusion of women journalists. 

Allowing the Taliban to dictate who can or cannot be in a room sets a dangerous precedent of normalising gender discrimination for diplomatic niceties. India is too big a player to dance to the Taliban’s gender tunes, even if it promises a win over Pakistan.

We should not forget that we are engaging with a regime that is not recognised by the global community due to their human rights records. Diplomatic engagement may demand conversation with regimes with which we have differences, but it does not demand endorsement. India’s voice carries weight in South Asia not just because of its size, but because of what it represents — a plural, constitutional democracy where women enjoy equal opportunities.

A rectification by the visiting foreign minister, who later called an ‘inclusive’ press conference, is encouraging. But it has to come with an apology and a strong reaffirmation by India that no form of gender exclusion will be tolerated in future diplomatic engagement.

At a time when New Delhi is re-engaging with Afghanistan, moral clarity matters as much as strategic calculus. Millions of Afghan women, who are silenced under the regime that Muttaqi represents, look at India as a symbol of hope and freedom. We should not betray them.

Anjana Sankar is a journalist based in Abu Dhabi. She covers conflicts, humanitarian crises and global politics. Views expressed here are the author’s own.

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