Silence in Delhi

When a visiting foreign dignitary denies women access to a press event in India, it is not merely a diplomatic oversight ~ it is a moral failure witnessed in real time.

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The recent exclusion of women journalists from a press interaction with the Afghan foreign minister in New Delhi has triggered rightful outrage. Yet the louder question is not what the Taliban did, but what India and its male journalists did not do.

For a nation that prides itself on democracy, equality, and a free press, allowing such an exclusion to unfold on its soil without objection is deeply unsettling, India is not a passive venue for visiting delegations to impose their values; it is a sovereign state whose institutions are expected to uphold its constitutional ethos, irrespective of who stands across the table.

The mere statement that the event was not coordinated by Indian authorities does not absolve responsibility. When discrimination happens in India ~ in any form, at any forum ~ silence becomes complicity.