India must engage with the Taliban, but do it cautiously

India can be a possible moderating influence in Afghanistan rather than wield little influence in the region by remaining disengaged. But New Delhi needs to look at relations beyond the Pakistan prism

- Barkha Dutt

The photograph of the Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi sitting under an old portrait of the Bamiyan Buddhas at the Afghanistan Embassy in Delhi —an iconic heritage site his group destroyed in 2001 on the orders of Mullah Omar — captured all the contradictions and cultural challenges that India’s dramatic reset with the Taliban will entail.

From lyricist Javed Akhtar to parliamentarian Mahua Moitra, several Indians have questioned or criticised this engagement. At an intuitive level, the angst is understandable. Since 2021, the Taliban have banned girls from secondary schools and women from universities. Women are completely excluded from formal political life. And in some provinces, women are forbidden to be treated by male doctors — UN Women warns that maternal mortality could increase by 50%.

The Taliban delegation made its own case worse by seeming to bring some of these Neanderthal policies to Indian soil when no women journalists were invited to the first press conference Muttaqi held. While all kinds of theories were offered to initially explain this, including that no one could dictate what the Taliban did within the compound of its own embassy; the fierce backlash forced the Taliban to hold a second press conference at the embassy and invite female reporters as well.