The Kabuliwala Returns

Symphony of Renewed Indo-Afghan Ties

- Gurmeet Brar Academician, Writer, Director

A short story titled Kabuliwala by the author Rabindranath Tagore was published in 1892 and it follows an Afghan dry-fruit trader as he moves through the shaded lanes of Calcutta, the 19th century.

His worn face and towering figure are an extreme to the very fragile Bengali home into which he finds himself. He is building a kind of a cross-cultural relationship with the spirited four-year-old daughter of the narrator, Mini, when he walks around with sack on his shoulder, telling her tales of nomadic caravans and snow crowned peaks. It is a heartrending story, a classic of South Asian fiction and an Indian school textbook, that captures the intensity of human relationships that cuts across national bordersa theme that strikes a shockingly prophetic tone in the context of the stuttering rebuilding of ties between India and Afghanistan. The historical osmosis between the Indian subcontinent and the rugged landscapes of Afghanistan that was created by ancient trade routes such as the Silk Road and was maintained by the waves of migration, commerce and common adversaries of the colonial yoke is represented by the Kabuliwala created by Tagore, who is not merely a quaint relic. Since the permeable borders of the Mughal days to a post-Independence Day of nonaligned foreign policy, these two nations have considered each other as natural allies, sharing the same geographical borders, similar culture, and fear of foreign intrusion. But this cloth has been constantly undermined by the spectre of conflict be that the Soviet invasion in 1979, the introduction of the mujahideen, the turbulent reemergence of the Taliban in 2021. The Kabuliwala seems to be coming back, but not as a lone traveller selling almonds and raisins, but as the precursor of a larger diplomatic revival.